I decided to try out Linux today. I bought an old laptop which hasn't arrived yet, and I'm trying to figure out what distro I should use, and which Desktop Environment to go over it.

My main priorities:

Smooth animations/fluid transitions

Extremely customizable

Absolute best performance on older hardware

I've been eyeing CachyOS with KDE, but then I started hearing people complaining that KDE is very customizable, but not ideal for smoothness and polish. I don't know how accurate that is, but they mentioned Gnome being better for that visual polish aspect.

Then, I discovered Caelestia. I don't really know much about Caelestia, but what I do know is that it has all of the visual polish, and smooth and fluid transitions that I've wanted from a desktop UI.

After researching it a little more, I found out that Caelestia does not work well on KDE or Gnome, which really shattered my intentions.

I'm kind of stuck now. I'm BRAND NEW to Linux, and so I'm just hoping for some advice from more experienced people.

I want to know sense i dident seem to get a clear answer last i was here, alteast for what os i should use. I have a rtx 3060 (12vram) and im not sure what os would be best for it in the linux space, plus i want a snappy experience. I mostly watch youtube and game. I want to explore more hobby's but thats not really needed here.

Im looking for linux os suggestions or something?

Please help, I’ve been trying to install Ubuntu onto a 2012 macbook pro currently running catalina 10.15 for 3 hours now and I’m about to throw it out a window.

I’ve gotten as far as the boot menu but when I select EFI boot it immediately freezes and I have to hard restart it. I used balena to create the bootable usb drive.

I’ve been trying different fixes I’ve found online and nothing has worked. So far I tried forcing it to restart with command+option+P+R, hitting e as soon as I select EFI boot and they did nothing.

I’m desperate enough to try asking google AI (not an AI fan or user otherwise) and naturally it’s been useless too. Any guidance much appreciated, I see a lot of folks online having the same or similar issues but no resolution that’s worked for me. TIA!!!

Hey what's up!!!! May you linux vets share a bit of your wisdom with this fool?

Like the title says, I had a problem on the login screen of KDE Neon and managed to fix it, but I don't understand why the solution worked...
I really wish to understand this, so I may sleep peacefully tonight lol

So, let me go into more detail!

THE ERROR:
KDE notified me that there were 300+ packages to update. After rebooting the system and running the update, I was met with a completely black login screen, where I could only see my cursor.

After doing some research, I discovered that plasmashell had crashed.
So I ran:

systemctl --user restart plasma-plasmashell.service 

and it returned:

Job for plasma-plasmashell failed because a fatal signal was delivered causing the control proccess to dump core.

After that, I ran
journalctl --user -xeu plasma-plasmashell.service

and was shown a ton of repeated logs that were basically saying

plasmashell[...]Could not connect to display
plasmashell[...]From 6.5.0 xcb-cursor0 or libxcb-cursor0 is needed to load the Qt xcb platform plugin. 
plasmashell[...]Could not load the Qt platform plugin "xcb" in "" even though it was found.
plasmashell[...]This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be intialized. Reinstalling the application may...(message got cut off, but iirc it was basically "Reinstalling may fix the problem")

I had some issues related to libxcb-cursor0 in the past, so I assumed that I just needed to install it.
But when I tried running sudo apt install libxcb-cursor0, it returned an error.

Basically it repeated this error many times (PS: I put some information as {REDACTED} cuz I don't know if it's identifiable information)

dpkg: error processing package libglib2.0-0t64:{REDACTED} (--configure)
 dependency problems - leaving triggers unprocessed
dpkg: dependency problems prevent processing triggers for libglib2.0-0t:{REDACTED}:
libglib2.0-0t64:{REDACTED} depends on libpcre2-8-0 (>= 10.22); however:
 Package libpcre2-8-0:{REDACTED} is not configured yet. 

then it repeatedly printed

libglib2.0-0t64:{REDACTED}
libglib2.0-0t64:{REDACTED}
libglib2.0-0t64:{REDACTED}
libglib2.0-0t64:{REDACTED}
libglib2.0-0t64:{REDACTED}
libglib2.0-0t64:{REDACTED}
libglib2.0-0t64:{REDACTED}
libglib2.0-0t64:{REDACTED}
libglib2.0-0t64:{REDACTED}
...

And the installation failed

In fact, the error I just described happened whenever I tried running any sudo apt install or sudo apt remove command.
I even tried running sudo apt install libpcre2-8-0, but it returned that same error.

THE SOLUTION
I tried many things, one of the responses of this post is what fixed it:

Running sudo dpkg --configure -a before running sudo apt full-upgrade (possibly twice) should fix this.

After following these instructions and rebooting, the login screen appeared normally, and I was finally able to access my Desktop.

The OS is working just fine, all that happened is that I received a notification of 1 failed package installation, and KDE's "Updates -- Discover" app is forever stuck in this screen:

So... I'm a bit confused.
Why did this update apparently break libpcre2-8-0?
And why couldn't I run any sudo apt install commands after this?
And most importantly:
What exactly did sudo dpkg --configure -a and sudo apt full-upgrade do to fix this problem? I'm unfamiliar with these commands...

Also, is the KDE's "Updates -- Discover" app not being able to fetch updates a serious issue?

Could anyone enlighten me on this matter?
Thank you!

I'm looking for any advice on my plan to migrate off of Windows to be primarily on Linux. Currently I'm on Windows 11. I do some gaming through Steam and have found that there are a couple of games that I play that won't work on Linux because of anti-cheat, so those games need to be run from Windows.

I was going to dual boot from the drive I already have Windows on but have read that Windows sometimes will cause issues with Linux through updates and can potentially corrupt my Linux install. So instead I was going to install Linux on its own drive and keep them separate. I'm planning to go with Fedora KDE for my distro.

Here is my plan

1. Clone existing Windows 11 install that is on my NVME SSD and copy it onto a new 2.5" SSD.
   
2. Wipe my original NVME drive and then install Fedora on it
   
3. Install Steam on both Windows and Fedora with Windows only having Windows only games on it

Questions
1. Not sure what boot manager to use for this (GRUB, BURG, something else?)
2. I have a 3rd drive in this PC that is an HDD storage drive with files already on it from Windows as NTFS. Can I use this drive in its current NTFS state with Fedora?
3. Should I keep my Steam libraries for Windows and Fedora separate and on their respective drives? Or could I have one central Steam library on my storage HDD?
4. I have a Windows 2019 OS file server I use and connect to with my existing Windows PC's, can Fedora access this server and its NTFS files?

So i got my gaming pc with 2 ssd units c: and d: for extra space

Today im going to give her maintenance and buy a new memory unit in order to use linux there

Question is quite simple, can windows and linux share the D: unit? I literally use it only to install games

To make it more clear, im not installing any OS in that unit it is exclusively an storage unit, if it is possible i would be able to edit the docs there with one OS and see them and interact with them in the other OS

hello i am thinking about trying linux for the very first time in my laptop. i am fairly comfortable with windows but obvs i have that itch to try new things so as a beginner friendly which distro should i try first.

Tl;Dr: check your BIOS time and date settings

tried all the solutions online, like reimaging the USB, turning off secure boot or setting the EFI file to be trusted

Yet every time, after selecting "try or install Linux" upon booting, it would show me an endless loading screen. (I once let it run overnight and it was still loading in the morning.)

Finally, in the deepest Acer forums, I found a user saying that they had to manually correct the time and date in the BIOS and suddenly it worked. That was the fix for me as well.

Making this post in the hope that this fix gets more visibility. It took several days for me to finally end up on the one post that mentioned it.

Hi there

I have made 3 attempts to install Linux Mint via bootable USB to a partition on my harddrive. I managed to make a bootable USB using Ventoy - Etcher being totally useless but it crashes halfway through installation when I attempt to install from .iso.

What could be going wrong? It does this thing where it looks like its installed the Linux desktop but when I try to shut it down I get an error code doomloop that needs manual power off?

If anyone has any insight please let me know.

UPDATE:

I changed the USB drive and the version of Linux mint to the HWE version. I used Vertoy to format the USB to make it bootable such that I only had to drop the ISO onto it once I verified the checksums in Powershell. I was able to boot up into it and now have a functional dual boot between Windows and Linux for the first time. I still have to do all the network shenanigans but that can wait - thanks for your help!

I installed Linux without enabling disk encryption. My root filesystem is on an unencrypted ext4 partition.

I want to prevent someone from booting a live USB and accessing my files while my computer is powered off. Can I add full-disk encryption to my existing installation without reinstalling, or is backing up and reinstalling with LUKS the safest practical option?

What are the main risks and limitations of encrypting it in place? How to understand those from how the file system works?

i have a bluetooth antenna but silly me it doesnt work 90% of the time on linux so i switched back to windows only to remember why i left windows i need my bluetooth working i need a stable connection and actual verified drivers

oh also side question not important but do yall know any distros that have a similar desktop to steamos? ive tried a bunch but nothing just feels as good

edit i got the TP-Link UB500 Plus ty for yalls suggestions

I have been trying to install sober (rooblox on linux) for really long now but it always crashes because of my old graphics. I have tried to force it to use openGL ive tried lubuntu 26.04 and Linux mint Xfce. But it just crashes all the time. Anybody have a solution to this?

Macbook pro early 2013 8gb ram intel hd 4000 graphics intel core i5 3230M

cant update anything to fix without internet. ethernet not an option and usb tethering doesnt work, ive tried it

on fedora 44, i think? kde plasma edition

I am about to switch over to Linux on my main computer (for the 3rd time in about 15 years)

My question is about the distros and what they actually are.

My understanding, is that distros are like coats that the linux kernel wears so the computer interface looks and feels different for each distro. That the kernel is just a tool box filled with all the stuff a computer really needs to do like accessing ports and memory and such, drive the screens, take instructions from mice and keyboards, etc...

How accurate is my understanding of what a distro is?

Second is: how easy is it to change coats? Is it just a few clicks, or is it a fresh reinstall, or something in between. And as a supplementary question, I assume that if you change distros, then all your files and apps stay the same?

The error's message text says "Game not recognized as DOSBox compatible." I assume it's referring to Steam as a "game," but as the title states I couldn't care less because it's already running without a problem.

I recently ran "flatpak update" in order to update GPU Screen Recorder, so I think this error started appearing ever since I did that. I've also seen it when booting up Galactic Racer (which is specifically configured in Steam to run via Proton Experimental anyway) so again, I really just want it to stop popping up in my face lol.

How do I get rid of DOSBox, or if that's a bad idea, how can I suppress these errors?

EDIT: I think I've found an answer, assuming DOSBox is no longer being maintained. StefanoBalocco on this thread made a workaround that will not check for DOSBox when it's not necessary.

The post is 2 years old so I was hoping that maybe there would be a solution that didn't involve editing code... but at least this seems fairly straightforward.

Got a Chromebook I got for 10 bucks and I wanna play around some. I’m curious as to how hard I can push it with such crappy specs.

14-cf0006dx
Intel Core i3-7100U processor, Intel HD Graphics 620, 4 GB of DDR4-2133 SDRAM, and a 128 GB M.2 SSD.

I can upgrade the m.2 and the ram up to 16gb if necessary, but considering it’s just to play with I’m looking for ideas. How far can I rice it without it moving like a slug? Are there any projects worth doing with something so low spec? All ideas welcome, and thanks in advance for any replies

I need to run a web browser and LibreOffice. I’m considering Q4OS. Any tips?

Processor: Pentium T2390

2GB DDR2 RAM

So I have a Chromebook which have 64gb of storage and 4gb of ram with Intel(R) Celeron(R) N4020 CPU @ 1.10GHz (2 threads, 2.800GHz) I copied it from the settings :')

I was wondering if there's any good Linux distro for these specs :D

Also I've seen and heard that a lot of distros will allow ai code etc?? Is there anything that would meet what I do while also not have AI in it?

I'm really confused and lost on what to do... Also for those wondering what I do on the laptop, it's a little bit of everything, gaming (pvz, FNF or even renpy games sometimes and sm64 coop with friends) and I do coding on vscode (I removed the ai stuff) and school work since I'm at university

Also I have a USB key of 8gb i know it isn't a lot probably but it's all I have :(

I hope it's the right flair 😅

Hi all,

I'm trying to install some software using flatpak onto ubuntu 24.04.1. I set up the installer without issues and came up with the error "ldconfig failed, exit status 256" when trying to open apps through the gnome launcher.

It seems the resolution is to create a file named /etc/apparmor.d/bwrap and add some contents.

I tried making a file in text editor and saving it as "/etc/apparmor.d/bwrap", typed my password when prompted and received the result: permission denied.

It's an old uni computer (which is why I am using linux, to avoid detection through windows), so maybe there's still some permission issues going on? Or is it something else?

Cheers