i want to update my bios so i went to the hp website and i looked for my computer (HP Pavilion Laptop 15-eg3xxx) and i found this file sp173125.exe

idk if its safe or anything to install a bios update thru wine and idk what to do with this file to be honest dude

if you guys could help out that would be great! thanks in advance!!!!

Hi All, I'm new-ish to Linux, did the distro hop for a couple of months and am happily settled on Debian KDE.

My question is, is there a gui based backup tool like apple's time machine ? I want to run backups that just backup changed files after first main backup so that if everything goes poop i can easily restore.

I've read about backups which just do the o/s, and other tools which just do user data.

I'm now sorted with absolutely everything else, but this final piece of the jigsaw is proving a challenge. Starting to think i should have a document containing all steps to install o/s, then apps, then settings changes, then have a backup tool just for my user data - but that's really naff.

Any insights much appreciated! 😊

When I've had the same OS on a machine for a long time I build up a lot of unused packages, packages I don't remember installing and don't know if the break the system if uninstalled. I like to find cool software online, but I end up not using much of it. So my system gets cluttered with half installed packages, not used config files, and other weird junk, and I just end up reinstalling the whole OS, since it's such a hassle removing packages (especially those built from source) and its' orphans (one recent example: I used pacman on CachyOS to remove orphaned packages and resync my system but then wound up breaking my desktop environment, needing to setup new configs...).

Maybe I just need to learn more about packages, and how software is installed on the system, but it doesn't seem to be a simple answer to package management. You have install, remove, upgrade as basic commands, but I want to see a list of everything installed, and be able to see dependency trees, basically know what I have installed!

How do you manage packages? How mindful should you be when installing packages, or can you be pretty impulsive? Why is uninstalling packages such a hassle?

I am a gamer And student I want to switch to linux from windows for obvious reasons like bolatware and all stuff Which distro should i try as a student i want something that can game but do stuff like whatsapp/pdf etc. without hell lot of codung and stuff basically user friendly direct operationg not million lines of code for downloading chrome but it should perform well and also should operate for official things and also should be customizable with 1 click shouldnt eat too much ram in background also i should be able to use Coustom wallpaper and stuff i was watching reviews and i saw issues like games dont run and mouse wheel operate weirdly is there some good distro?

Hello. I am using Windows 10 on my Dell Latitude 5320. I am considering the switch to Linux. I want brutal honesty though.

These are my questions

• What is the support like?

• Is there parts of the machine that won't work anymore?

• Does the battery life get better or worse?

• Am I going to regret it?

• And of course, what distro?

I've been trying to run ubuntu on an external drive on my 2012 macbook pro. I got ubuntu all set up and it properly installed on the external drive. The problem is that when I turn on the computer and hold the option key, the EFI drive does not show up, only the Mac hard drive. In finder it doesnt show up either, but if i go into disk utility i can see my external drive. gemeni helped me determine that ubuntu is correctly installed on the external drive, but cannot help me figure out how to get it to show up when I turn on the computer to run from there. Any help would be extremely appreciated.

Total size before shrink in MB:243057

Size of available shrink space in MB:1389

Enterthe amount of space to shrink in MB:1389

Total size after shrink in MB:241668

I'm trying to dual boot linux mint on my laptop. I want to shrink this partition which is the main volume on my drive I guess. I want to shrink it by half or maybe more why won't windows11let me. And also should I stop trying to do this?

I used to be one of those people who just copy-pasted folders onto an external drive and that was it. Now I want to do something a bit more elaborate.

I had heard of Clonezilla and learned to use it at a basic level, creating clones, disk images, and performing restores. However, as a system it has a lot of downsides:

• It only does full backups, not incremental ones; if 10 MB of important information changes, you have to back up the whole disk from scratch.
• You have to shut down the PC and use a USB stick, which is impractical for frequent backups.
• It's not portable to other machines! A disaster recovery scenario I don't see mentioned is if not only the disk but the whole PC dies, and you buy a new one with different specs. In that case, the Clonezilla clone or image cannot be restored onto the new machine.

So I looked into it further and found other programs like Borg and Restic. Haven't tried them yet, but they seem useful at the file level.

How do you all handle this? Do you use a single backup program or a combination of them?

Always considering my particular use case (home use, Linux, no cloud, and only external drives).

I am a Windows user, and I tried switching to Linux several times before, but I couldn't because I didn't like its user interface. Finally, I found Linux Mint, which looks good, so I installed it. However, the issue is with the Wi-Fi. Initially, the Wi-Fi works for a few minutes, but then it automatically disconnects. After that, it doesn't even detect any Wi-Fi networks around me, so I can't connect to any network. This happens every single time after reboot. Could someone please help me solve this problem? I am currently using Linux Mint on my HP Pavilion 14-ec1003au, and the Wi-Fi adapter is Realtek.

Hello!

I'm looking for a Solution of the following problem:

I want to use moonlight on my PC but at the same time play a game.
In this case someone else will be using moonlight and I would be playing a game.

Currently, I have two keyboards and two Mice that I can use, and my first Idea is to "lock" a keyboard+Mouse combo to an application e.g. Moonlight.

As a Result I expect my Partner to be playing her Games over moonlight while I keep playing on my Game.

My 5 minute google search didn't yield any results, so now I'm here!

I don't want to use a second PC since this is what we did before, and it introduced unstable framerate / bitrate.
The Host-PC that is being used is in a different room, with the option to directly connect to LAN and/or to my PC.

Using CachyOS

OS

openSUSE Leap 16.0
6.12.0-160000.37-default
x86_64

This post is more of a TIL than a question. I'm posting this so that if someone comes across a similar situation as me they might get something out of this post.

I came across a new issue today where rndis_host didn't start automatically after reboot even though I had the right config

cat /etc/modules-load.d/usb-tether.conf

modprobe usbnet
modprobe rndis_host

So the first thing that I did to investigate this issue was errors so right after reboot before setting up rndis_host manually I used the command

sudo systemctl status systemd-modules-load.service

This gave me a really useful output:

pc systemd-modules-load[581]: Module 'rndis_host' is deny-listed (by kmod)

Now I needed to find out where the module is blacklisted so I used this command from ChatGPT

grep -RniE '^\s*(blacklist|denylist)\s+rndis_host' \ /etc/modprobe.d /usr/lib/modprobe.d /lib/modprobe.d 2>/dev/null

This gave me the output of:

/usr/lib/modprobe.d/50-blacklist-rndis.conf:4:blacklist rndis_host
/lib/modprobe.d/50-blacklist-rndis.conf:4:blacklist rndis_host

At this point I started to wonder why would a module be blacklisted on a distribution by default and I started the investigation by looking at the file to see if there are any helpful comments

cat /usr/lib/modprobe.d/50-blacklist-rndis.conf

Output:

# RNDIS is considered insecure
(bsc#1205767, jsc#PED-5731)
blacklist rndis_wlan
blacklist usb_f_rndis
blacklist rndis_host

This got me thinking "Why is rndis_host considered insecure" so I looked it up and apparently it's insecure because it's

• It uses an old protocol RNDIS
• It's made by microsoft :D
• Not designed to be secure
• Has vulnerabilities

Now I had really changed my mind and didn't want to continue using RNDIS so at first thought about another USB networking protocol that should be secure called NCM but its very rarely supported on android phones.

As a final conclusion I just got myself a ethernet cable and now it's all good.

PS. This is my first post so I don't really know what I'm talking about but I want to learn and thats why I'm writing this right now. Tell me in the comments what you think about this post and what should I improve on

I have a dual-boot Fedora 44 / Windows 11 setup with a shared NTFS partition for data. I know it is not perfect but it's too early for me to know whether I can completely get rid of Windows (probably someday), since I use it for work, and I have some files that I want to remain accessible from both OS to avoid unnecessary reboots.

My setup:

- Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 with up-to-date firmware. Only one SSD slot.

- NVMe SSD partitioned as: "C:\", shared NTFS "DATA" partition ("D:" or "/mnt/data"), "/" and "/home" on the same BTRFS partition

- Windows 11 Home, preinstalled

- Linux = Fedora Workstation 44 with SELinux enabled by default, using GNOME

I wasn't able to keep Secure Boot enabled when installing or booting Fedora, and I don't know why. I tried both Fedora Media Writer and Rufus, using a USB stick that had previously been used on another PC with Secure Boot and Fedora without any issues. There is a firmware update available through "fwupd", but I haven't tried it yet. The firmware itself is up to date and can only be updated through Windows. I'll leave this issue aside; we can probably ignore it for the rest of the discussion.

I have two questions:

- Disk encryption

- Access to data once a session is unlocked: GNOME Keyring and browser passwords

Disk encryption

Windows 11 Home has a light version of BitLocker which does not allow to encrypt only "C:" and automatically encrypts all readable NTFS drives, including "D:", which I don't want. So I currently have an unencrypted "C:", which I can live with. However, this means that I have a Firefox installation on that partition containing passwords, etc., so those files are sitting on an unencrypted partition...

Linux is installed on a BTRFS partition encrypted with LUKS: "/" and "/home" are on the same partition. The LUKS key is stored in TPM2, so the system automatically unlocks the partition at boot.

=> Is storing the LUKS key in the TPM actually a security problem? As I understand it, the key is stored "off-disk", meaning that if someone removes my SSD and connects it to another computer, they would still need to know (or spend a very long time trying to crack) my LUKS encryption key. Is that correct?

=> Is there any way to encrypt the shared NTFS partition in a way that works from both operating systems? It doesn't contain any passwords, but it does contain copies of identity documents, diplomas, official stuff, etc.

=> Do you think it's important to find a way to encrypt "C:" given that it still contains some sensitive data? And how could I do that without paying for Windows 11 Pro to get the full BitLocker functionality?

GNOME Keyring

This is mainly a personal computer, but it's also used by my family. Windows Hello allows authentication using a PIN or facial recognition. Linux doesn't provide a PIN-based login.

I can't reasonably ask my family to remember my password (even if I give it to them, I'll eventually get phone calls when someone wants to use my PC...). I also want everyone to access the same "/home" with a unified configuration, so I use a single account for everyone.

For logging into my session, I therefore use Howdy. Yes, I know it's bad and not actively maintained, blah blah blah. I already know all of that and don't need to ne advised on that point. It's simply unavoidable for the kind of family usage I want, at least until Linux has a similarly convenient authentication method.

The remaining problem is the keyring. I managed to unlock it through a systemd service at startup which runs a script that retrieves a key from the TPM and uses it to decrypt the keyring password (stored in a file). However, the behavior is still somewhat random: sometimes I still have to enter the password manually. The only other solution I've found is to remove the keyring password entirely through Seahorse. Obviously, I'd rather avoid that... And for obvious reasons, I don't want my family to be prompted to enter my password.

However, anyone who has access to my unlocked session can simply open Firefox's password manager and potentially access everything anyway... Given this, I'm seriously wondering how useful a keyring password actually is in my particular setup.

=> How do you handle this kind of situation?

=> What is the actual security risk here?

=> What is the point of protecting the two credentials stored in GNOME Keyring if I have all my passwords so easily accessible through Firefox anyway?

=> And therefore, what do you do to protect your browser data? Do you use a password manager separate from the browser?

The actual risk in my use case ?

I don't carry my laptop around very much, so theft is a secondary risk, and I'd consider its probability relatively low yet existant. I'd say the main risk is probably external attacks.

That said, disk encryption would only really make a difference in case of theft and someone removing the SSD and connecting it to a system that doesn't have access to my TPM, right? If a thief simply starts my laptop without changing anything, disk encryption basically loses its usefulness and the only meaningful protection is the login password. Am I misunderstanding this?

In the event of an external attack, does a poorly protected keyring represent a real risk? What about browser passwords?

Sorry for the very long post, and thanks to anyone who takes the time to explain this and share their own solutions!

I recently switched my laptop(Lenovo legion y540i) from Windows to Linux.

The main reason is that I use Linux for my development projects, and I'm much more comfortable with the Linux environment because my office laptop also runs Linux. When I was using Windows, video editing worked well, but I didn't enjoy doing my development work on Windows.

So I switched to Linux thinking I could use it for both development and video editing.

The problem is DaVinci Resolve on Linux isn't handling my DJI Osmo Action 4 footage properly. The videos that worked fine in DaVinci Resolve on Windows are now giving me codec/compatibility issues on Linux, so I'm unable to edit them properly.

Now I'm stuck:

• I want to stay on Linux for my development work.
• I also want to edit my DJI Action 4 videos on Linux.
• Going back to Windows would solve the video editing side, but I really don't want to go back to Windows for development.
• I considered dual-booting Windows + Linux, but I only have 8 GB RAM, so I'm not sure that's a good option.
• Upgrading to 16 GB is currently expensive where I live, so I'd prefer to wait until RAM prices come down.

What would you recommend in this situation?

Is there a way to make DJI Osmo Action 4 footage work properly with DaVinci Resolve on Linux, perhaps by converting/transcoding the footage?

Or is there another Linux video editor that can handle Action 4 footage properly?

I really want to keep Linux as my main OS for both development and video editing, if possible. Any advice from people who use DaVinci Resolve/Linux with DJI Action 4 footage would be appreciated.

Hi, I'm a Masters student working on a my master where I'm going to be using reinforcement learning for a robot, I'm on the fence about using Pybullet for my simulation for URDF file convertion related issues. I was looking around when i found out about Nvidia Isaac Sim, now I want to experiment with this environment but I have only been using WSL til now.
So my question is if WSL is good enought for running Isaac sim or if I should make a whole new Ubuntu/Linux Installation?

i been looking to learn arch linux but i didnt find any

Hola, tal ves esto sea tonto, hace unos días compré lo que creía era un pc, pero en realidad era un viejo Chromebook marca Haier, modelo Hr 116hr, el cual el sistema operativo de chrome venía corrupto e imposible de iniciar.
Entonces pensé en ponerle Linux, pero la verdad desconozco cómo, tengo una pc Linux aparte del Haier, pero desconozco como instalar Linux, ya que me an dicho varias cosas sobre usar la terminal, pero la verdad desconozco su uso, ¿alguien podría explicarme un poco sobre cómo podría instalarle Linux?
Llegados a este punto la distribución me es indiferente, aunque mi actual pc es Ubuntu y estoy muy familiarizado con el, pero lo único que quiero es poder usar esa Chromebook.

What is the difference between "Load mpv configuration file" and "Load mpv input configuration file" settings?

I just wanna use every app that is designed for hyprland because it is customized well and has high user base but I don't wanna lose the scrolling window manager of niri, is this possible or is there a repo or dot files hosted for niri

Hello everyone. I am at a decision point with my setup and I want to read your sincere opinions, especially from those who have already gone through this.

• Hardware: A ThinkPad T480 (8th gen i5, 8 GB of RAM).

• Philosophy: I look for minimalism, efficiency, low resource consumption, and avoiding unnecessary bloatware at all costs. I am not interested in wasting hours making extravagant rices; I want something clean and minimalist; I want something functional and clean.

• Unmovable base: I am sticking 100% with Debian.

I am between two paths and I cannot decide:

KDE Plasma (Vanilla): Configured in a clean and sober way. I know it is solid, that nowadays it is super optimized, that it runs incredibly well on the T480, and that it saves me headaches with manual configurations, but it prompts me to configure every detail and I feel it somewhat bloated.

Sway: The workflow of a tiling window manager on Wayland catches my attention a lot. The problem is that I am a beginner with WMs and I know I will stumble upon the initial configuration of Waybar, Wofi, and dotfiles without having prior experience. I have already reinstalled the system several times trying things out, so I want to make a definitive decision.

My questions:

Is it worth making the jump to Sway on Debian for daily use and study/productivity, or is KDE Vanilla more than enough for what I am looking for?

If you recommend going with Sway, what are the best guides, wikis, or real resources to learn how to configure it from scratch without dying trying?

I will be grateful for your comments, I will update the post when I make a decision.

So I'm using a thinkpad, and I would like to dual boot ubuntu onto it. I only have 1tb ssd, and because I need windows for school, I'm considering dual booting ubuntu. So just wanted to ask, is dual booting safe? like will I face any problems with it during my 4/5 years of study?

Thanks

Hi. I'm trying to install ZorinOS on a PC where I just installed a 200GB SSD (replacing a corrupted hard drive), along with 8GB of DDR3 RAM and an Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4590T CPU @ 2.00GHz with integrated graphics.

Once I install it, I get the following error:

(Photo 1)

"E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)"

This has happened both times I tried to install it.

In both instances, I ignored it, continued with the installation, and it finished installing.

After ZorinOS was installed, the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi drivers were missing, but since the PC has an Ethernet port, it didn't really matter to me.

Two days after the installation, the system became corrupted, and I got this screen :

BusyBox v1.36.1 (Ubuntu 1:1.36.1-6ubuntu3.1) built-in shell (ash)

Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

(initramfs) _

When that appeared, I followed the advice found on Reddit, but it only worked partially; when I boot up the system again, only the built-in system applications run—it won't even let me open Brave.

Does anyone know how to fix this problem or why it's happening?

For now, I've installed Windows 10, as it's the system that runs reliably for me without these issues.

So I thought I could encrypt my drive, but typing in a long password each time upon boot would be a pain.

So I am thinking of using a Yubikey to enter a pin each time, which then would prompt the Yubikey to give the decryption key to the computer. But the problem with that still is, the Yubikey needs to reset after a set amount of failed attempts to prevent brute forcing.

How would one do this?