Arch Linux

This installation of arch is 2 years old at this point and there's nothing wrong with it and I want to do a clean reinstall to feel more fresh. But I've been constantly delaying it for a long time because I'm scared breaking something and also not having my laptop fully functional for even a day isn't a pleasant thought.

The benefits I think is being able to handpick which files I want to keep and which packages I would reinstall since the thought of how many files and packages are left over from when I momentarily needed them is really unpleasent. But this habit of reinstalling the OS as a cleanup method might be a bad one I've brought myself from the time I used windows which was justified back then but it may no longer be here since I can achieve what I want with a much more simple and less risky method

So am I being an idiot here? Or should I go for it?

Edit: I do have bleachbit but the benefit of a reinstall is that only system files, essential packages and my personal files are kept (actually copied out, formatted and copied back in for my files). These two aren't the same

Edit 2: Thank you everyone for their answers, it's clear that I don't have that much reason to wipe my system at the moment. It might be a better learning experience to look for orphan files and packages

What I want:

To boot into a BTRFS snapshots from rEFind boot manager.

Additional Info:

1. So, apparently, to restore the BTRFS snapshot of a root subvolume, I shouldn't do it with the root partition being actively used.

2. So, I need to boot into the desired snapshot from the boot manager itself.

3. GRUB has grub-btrfs, which lets you boot into snapshot from OS selection screen itself.

4. rEFInd has refind-btrfs, which should do the same as grub-btrfs. But it didn't in my case. I am not seeing any way to boot into a snapshot from rEFInd.

5. I use BTRFS Assistant with snapper to manage snapshots.

6. I am not seeing any way to restore the snapshot from live environment too.

7. I am using CachyOS (Arch) with Plasma DE.

8. I suspect the reason is my unusual /efi /boot partition layout. (attached below)

9. I did my partition this way because, my initial EFI partition had less storage (as seen on image), so , I created another boot partition and mounted my pre-existing EFI partition to /boot/efi. I did this by referring a Youtube video (I know, I should've known better)

10. I also encrypted my BTRFS / partition

11. If you need any other info, please ask.

Updated earlier today and some of the packages were gtk, adwaita and related. Is it just me or did anyone else notice this?

Hi, brand new linux noob and am having issues right off the bat.

I've just installed Garuda Dr460nized edition on my Legion laptop, fresh install (no dual boot), run the updater, installed a few apps and first thing I see is a little warning that tells me I need to merge pacdiff files and the file affected is mirrorlist.pacnew.

Do a little reading, get the general gist of what I'm supposed to do, then use the distro bundled software (Kompare) to merge all differences, save, reboot. BUT, the warning it still there, and now, when I go back into kompare, it tells me the two files are identical, plus there seem to be a bunch a graphical bugs now that weren't there before I merged the files.

Very confused as to why this file, which just seems to be a list of various website mirrors, would cause graphical issues but like I said, I'm brand new to this, but determined to learn from my mistakes.

Can anyone explain what I've done wrong? I can't seem to undo the changes now.

Hey all, I recently wound up with duplicate GRUB entries for my Garuda install. The second entry is the same installation as the top one. How can I remove the duplicate? Should I edit the grub config file?

I'm currently on EndeavourOS that i set up like a week ago and I'm using a 4070 currently, I'm really new to Linux I used mint for about two months and just swapped over to EndeavourOS, but I wanted to know the proper way to swap over to the AMD card some people are saying I need to remove the Nvidia drivers and the add AMDs drivers then swap or others are saying just drop it in and then last is I have to reinstall the os, what is the proper way to do my upgrade? Thanks in advance sorry for the formatting

I have failed my reading comprehension.

I can't find an answer in: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_User_Repository or in search engine AI slop

sudo pacman -Syu cbonsai command can't find a package

I'm thinking about switching to a Firefox fork as a web browser. Apart from Tor, they're all on AUR. I can't use Tor all the time.

Do you consider that a security risk that's worth worrying about? E.g. you could get a dodgy maintainer putting malware in it, as least theoretically.

Hello everyone,

I'm new to Linux (currently using EndeavourOS), and the journey has been... an adventure. But like Frodo carrying the One Ring, I'm struggling with Bluetooth. I can't get my headphones or mouse to connect. Meanwhile, my keyboard works thanks to a dedicated HP dongle, and my Xbox controller is running via a Windows-certified dongle (after summoning xone).

So, I ask you, wise wizards of Linux:

💍 Is there a single dongle to rule them all? One Bluetooth adapter to bind them, to pair them all, and in the darkness... not fail me?

❓ Why did everything work fine on Windows natively, while Linux demands multiple dongles? Even my Xbox controller (though occasionally possessed) worked without extra setup.

🔍 Can you recommend multiple Bluetooth dongle alternatives that work well on Linux? I try to avoid Amazon as much as possible, and finding good options elsewhere is a quest of its own.

If you have insights, fixes, or a dongle that truly rules them all, I’d really appreciate your guidance! 🧙‍♂️

Thanks in advance!

From Wiki:

When PKGBUILDs receive enough community interest and the support of a Package Maintainer, they are moved into the extra repository (maintained by the Package Maintainers) <...>

So, librewolf package has 150 votes and librewolf-bin has 429 votes. And it's 6th most popular package in AUR (by "Popularity" metric). Why it still isn't in official repos?

I understand why things like yay or google-chrome isn't in official repos, but browsers like LibreWolf seems reasonable to include. Other browsers Brave, Zen, Ungoogled Chromium isn't in official repos too, but Vivaldi is.

Around two years ago, we've merged the [community] repository into [extra] as part of the git migration. In order to not break user setups, we kept these repositories around in an unused and empty state. We're going to clean up these old repositories on 2025-03-01.

On systems where /etc/pacman.conf still references the old [community] repository, pacman -Sy will return an error on trying to sync repository metadata.

The following deprecated repositories will be removed: [community], [community-testing], [testing], [testing-debug], [staging], [staging-debug].

Please make sure to remove all use of the aforementioned repositories from your /etc/pacman.conf (for which a .pacnew was shipped with pacman>=6.0.2-7)!

It's both Valentine's Day and #iLoveFS Day today, so I'll share some of the Free Software applications that I have loved using in the past year:

* @EndeavourOS, @archlinux and @debian GNU/Linux;
* @kde Plasma Desktop and a lot of their apps, especially the Kate editor and Kontact suite;
* @libreoffice (Incredibly useful);
* @mozillaofficial Firefox (Linux and Android);
* @Mastodon and the @Tusky client (Tusky looks good, works well, and is feature-packed but accessible);

🧶1/2

Since a few days ago when I updated my system, I noticed that I was unable to paste anything while using Code - OSS. It seems an issue caused by the newer Electron version.

On the issue page there are a few solutions listed already.

I'm posting this in case someone is having the same issue and might be wondering what is going on.

:: Remove make dependencies after install? [y/N] y

If I didn't remove make dependencies, would yay/pacman be smart enough to know the thing I am installing does not actually depend on them? It's a very nice feature of package managers that they track dependencies and can do things like remove "dangling" dependencies and I don't want to mess that up with some random dependencies needed only for a build. But I also don't want to install something every time I need to build lol.

So does yay and/or pacman know that the things I am installing don't actually depend on the make dependencies?

Solution: Keeping the make dependencies after install will not fool pacman and/or yay into thinking the make dependencies are "real" dependencies of whatever you're building from AUR. They both correctly recognize them as orphans (unless of course something else actually depends on them). So feel free to not remove them during install without worrying about dependency graphs getting tarnished; you'll be able to easily remove them later if you'd like.

When the newly released sdl3 is installed it offers to replace sdl2 with sdl2-compat which is a compatibility wrapper around sdl3. Any experience with this wrapper? Are you a happy user? Have you run into any breakage?

Hey guys, up to a few days ago it was working fine, i.e. it wouldn't go to sleep ever. But probably some update or something else changed and now after 13 minutes my pc goes to sleep.

I read the power management/suspend page in the arch wiki, and now have the following:

# /etc/systemd/sleep.conf
[Sleep]
AllowSuspend=no
AllowHibernation=no
AllowSuspendThenHibernate=no
AllowHybridSleep=no

as well as:

# /etc/systemd/logind.conf
[Login]
HandleSuspendKey=suspend
IdleAction=ignore
IdleActionSec=0

(that last one I dont remember where I got it from)

I tried masking systemd targets, but after waiting without touching anything it still went to sleep after 12-13 minutes.

$ systemctl mask sleep.target suspend.target hibernate.target hybrid-sleep.target

Notice in the command below I have xfce4-power-manager (though it looks different than on my laptop) but I dont see it in control of sleep itself, but rather upower and NetworkManager control sleep.

$ systemd-inhibit
WHO                 UID  USER PID  COMM            WHAT                                                                       WHY                                       MODE
NetworkManager      0    root 734  NetworkManager  sleep                                                                      NetworkManager needs to turn off networks delay
UPower              0    root 1149 upowerd         sleep                                                                      Pause device polling                      delay
xfce4-power-manager 1000 user 1053 xfce4-power-man handle-power-key:handle-suspend-key:handle-hibernate-key:handle-lid-switch xfce4-power-manager handles these events  block

3 inhibitors listed.

I looked at the manual for upower as well as its wiki page but couldn't see anything about enabling/disabling/handling suspends in any way and after further reading it seems it doesn't directly handle suspends/hibernates, just informs stuff like systemd about power levels and such.

As for NetworkManager, does it really have the ability to force a suspend?

It gets really annoying when trying to watch a movie, or when I'm afk in a game but still want to keep an eye on it.

Can anyone please help me? Thanks in advance!

System info: Kernel: 6.12.10-arch1-1 DE/WM: bspwm

Edit: Checked both BIOS settings (Couldn't find anything related to power saving) and the settings for the monitors themselves (no power saving features there either). How would I check to see if it is indeed just the monitors going to sleep, and by extension how would I fix it?

My MoBo: ASUS ROG STRIX B550-F Gaming

If I turn my controller on, it won't connect. But if it's on when I turn my computer on (or restart/wake from sleep), it connects just fine. I am using the "Xbox 360 Wireless Receiver for Windows". It's possible it's actually connected but not recognized by Steam or any games, but I am not sure how to troubleshoot that directly. The Arch wiki (linked) doesn't say anything about this specifically.

I am on CachyOS.

Any ideas? <3

Update: This somehow fixed itself. I don't think I even upgraded or anything since it was a problem.

As the title says.
pacman -Q lists only name and version;
pacman -Qi does have a "Packager" field, but i think it's not the same thing;
pacman -Qs seems to be what i want (if local means "all installed packages atm") but it's all prefixed by local/ instead of repo name like mingw32/ which is what i want.

I'm using MSYS2 in windows.

On Windows I use the linked program. I tried using KDE's accessibility settings but the lowest time it can do it 100 ms, which I naturally do on occasion (mashing backspace quickly, for example). Is there any other solution?

I've seen some tools that do things like take snapshots periodically and ones that add snapshots to grub, but not this specifically. Does something exist?

This will probably be on EndeavourOS, not Arch directly, if it matters.

Hello Arch Linux peeps,

I was browsing the Arch wiki and was re-reading the Nvidia sextion, and for my 3090 it states I should be using Nvidia-open/nvidia-open-dkms, however, I am using the proprietary ones.

What is best practice for switching to Nvidia-open-dkms?

Since swapfile shouldn't be in a snapshot, and I want my system encrypted therefore I am asking if it could be possible to make efi partition big enough to include swapfile inside it?

I can't find documentation for this process, so would it require some extra steps to make it work?

Hey everyone, I’ve recently been trying to go back to a dual boot setup with Windows and Arch. I would fully switch to Arch, but unfortunately there are still a few things I need access to that either don’t have a FOSS alternative that meets my needs or won’t run through WINE/Proton.

I used to already have a dual boot setup but recently had to buy a new motherboard, which also involved getting a new CPU, so I ended up wiping everything and just riding on Windows for a while, but I did make sure to give Windows’ boot partition enough space knowing that I was planning on dual booting again soon.

I figured it was all going to be easy-peasy as I’ve done it before and it worked with no problems at all. However, after installing Arch the same way I’d done before and rebooting my PC, it booted straight to Windows, completely skipping GRUB.

I went the lazy route and used Archinstall, which received a UI update since last time I used it so I figured maybe the process changed and I messed it up by not noticing it. So I tried again, this time taking the manual install route… same result.

No GRUB entry would show up on UEFI so I figured maybe it installed in the wrong location or I messed it up again somehow. Booted on the Arch ISO, mounted the EFI partition to check it, both GRUB Windows’ boot manager are there.

After a quick search I found that some motherboard might need you to toggle secure boot on and back off to force it to check for bootloaders. It apparently specifically applies to Acer motherboards, both of my motherboards are Asus (old one was TUF Gaming x570-Pro, new one is ROG Strix x870-F Gaming) but I figured I’d give it a try.

Only way I managed to get anything else to show up was by enabling CSM, then a second “boot” entry on that drive would show up. But it seems that “boot” entry is just the drive itself because when I tried to boot from it, it just gave me that dreaded screen that tells you it couldn’t find anything to boot, to plug in a bootable drive and press enter.

I tried again via Archinstall, this time picking systemd-boot since during my search earlier i found that systemd-boot is apparently easier to set up a dual boot than GRUB… same result. My PC just won’t see Linux bootloaders, it seems.

The only way I managed to make it “work” was by making a second EFI partition on that same drive, leaving the Windows boot partition untouched and giving Arch its own boot partition. By “work” I mean I could finally get systemd-boot to launch, but if I wanted to boot into Windows, I’d have to boot into UEFI and switch the boot devices priorities around, which, while better than nothing, is far from ideal.

In doing so I also noticed that the systemd-boot entry showed up the same way as the “empty drive” entry did earlier when I enabled CSM, might be normal, nit-picking, figured it was worth mentioning.

The way my UEFI is currently set up is:

• CSM disabled
• Secure Boot > OS Type > Other OS
• Secure Boot mode > Standard

That’s the way I had it set up on my old motherboard back when dual boot worked, and it’s the way it needs to be set up for secure boot to be disabled according to Asus support posts I found.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what I might be doing wrong?

Additionally, somewhat unrelated but something I found when messing around with Archinstall is that if I set Archinstall to automatically partition everything using BTRFS, it generates 5 subvolumes, one of which is @.snapshots, but if I try to manually replicate that set up (because the automatic one wants to wipe the whole drive and I don’t want that because I want to keep Windows), it won’t let me make a @.snapshots subvolume. Is this important at all? If so, can I add it post-install?

Thanks in advance! And happy new year!

I'll start: After switching to Neovide from the terminal for Neovim, I got really hooked on the animated cursor and smooth scrolling (links to Neovide's features page). It wasn't until 2 months ago when the earlier was added to Kitty. I did so much overthinking about which terminal to use, and realized that I wouldn't (and don't) use most of the features provided by ones like iTerm and Kitty, though I picked the later. I was pleasantly surprised to see it added, even if it could use more work to make long smooth cursor animations like Neovide. The only other feature I want is smooth scrolling, I can't believe there are no modern terminals with it.

(Somewhat) Side note: At this point many users realized that Ghostty got over-hyped, here is Mitchell Hashimoto's (dev of Ghostty) thoughts:

https://mitchellh.com/writing/ghostty-1-0-reflection
Ghostty: Reflecting on Reaching 1.0 – Mitchell Hashimoto

I didn't anticipate the hype. Some people think I am lying when I say this. I'm not. I'm not so naive to think that private betas and exclusive access don't generate hype in principle. But I didn't think many people at all would be interested in a terminal emulator. I thought I was building boring software for a niche audience. No hype! But I was wrong, and the consequences were real. People were frustrated that they couldn't get in. People felt left out. People felt like I was being fake to generate hype. The waitlist grew larger than I was comfortable allowing in (given my prior stated priorities). I'm sorry about that. All I can say is that I didn't intend for this to happen. I ramped up beta invites to try to get as many people in as I felt comfortable with (well, a bit beyond that). We ended the beta at around 5,000 users in a Discord of 28,000 at the time. Not quite the percentage of access I wanted for people but more than I could handle.
...

One more negative aspect of the hype is the expectation of Ghostty being revolutionary. It is and it isn't. Ghostty has different goals and tradeoffs than other terminals. For those looking for those properties, Ghostty is a breath of fresh air and does things that no other terminal does. But for others, it's just a terminal. And that's okay. I hope you find a terminal that works for you and I don't claim that Ghostty is the end all be all of terminals.

I looked up specifically examples of this and didn't find answers, they're buried in general discussions about why compiling may be better than pre-built. The reasons I found were control of flags and features, and optimizations for specific chips (like Intel AVX or ARM Neon), but to what degree do those apply today?

The only software I can tell benefits greatly from building from source, is ffmpeg since there are many non-free encoders decoders and upscalers that can be bundled, and performance varies a lot between devices due to which of them is supported by the CPU or GPU. For instance, Nvidia hardware encoders typically produce higher quality video for similar file sizes than ones from Intel AMD or Apple. Software encoders like x265 has optimizations for AVX and NEON (SIMD extensions for CPUs).