Linux Questions

Hi all;

Question since I came across a weird issue on my mom's laptop (Acer Aspire) that I just installed Linux Mint on over the holiday break. She's in another state, so I'm debugging remotely.

Occasionally when booting up, she'll get to the GUI log in screen with the selection for individual users, she'll enter her password and press enter, and then it will just end up with a black screen with the regular Linux Mint cursor.

The weird thing is that after rebooting and going into GRUB, selecting Advanced (option #2), and clicking continue boot normally, it will go right back to the login screen and boot normally with no black screen. In fact the one video I found of this is the one that basically told me to do just that - go into advanced, continue normally.

My question is, what causes this; is this just a quirk of Acer? It doesn't happen on my two computers so it boggles my mind.

TL;DR: Is my statement below incorrect? Are there in fact meaningful efforts to improve accessibility on Linux? Are there distros that people have actually used practically that make an effort to be accessible?

I have used desktop Linux on and off since 2009, mostly flavors of Ubuntu with occasional detours into things like Arch or CentOS (RIP).

I currently have Mint installed on a separate drive but I can't fully break away from Windows because as a blind user the experience is not only unsatisfactory it has gotten worse in the years I've been using it. Orca hasn't improved at all, and the magnifier has actually lost functionality at some point, my guess is the move away from GNOME 2. Among other things you used to be able to assign arbitrary modifier keys to zoom in and out with the mouse wheel but this is no longer the case.

I have little faith that things will improve. Any given Linux distro isn't one product, it's a bunch of different projects. One group makes the kernel, another makes the shell, another the window manager, yet another makes the desktop environment, audio, bluetooth, graphics drivers etc. All these make the assumption that the user is able-bodied, and bolting accessibility on top of all these disparate systems after the fact is very difficult. It's no accident that MacOS and iOS are frequently cited as the most accessible platforms. Apple controls the entire stack from hardware to UI and even many of the apps and has the resources to devote to serving a comparatively tiny portion of their userbase.

So, I made the switch to Linux Mint about 2 weeks ago, and have been having some issues, specifically with gaming and art programs.

The issues seem to be related to memory. I don't have the memory to open a large art file in either Krita or GIMP. My Coral Island game keeps crashing (OOM - kill process).

So, it would be easy to assume my computer just doesn't have the memory for these activities, except . . . they worked fine on Windows. I could open my art files in Photoshop and Coral Island ran like a dream for months.

It's disheartening because everywhere I look says the issue must be with my machine not having enough memory. But my machine could run everything just fine when using a different OS (with way more things installed).

Does anyone have any help or insight they might be able to provide? I have no interest in going back to Windows.

Thank you!

**SOLVED - increased the swap to 8 GB, which seems to have solved the issue for now. Thank you, everyone, for your help!

cross-posted from: https://ani.social/post/26202606

If you look closely, Kana appears a little thicker than Kanji and Latin characters. Hangeul also appears thicker just like the Kana.

It seems to affect Dolphin and Strawberry. But I noticed that the Firefox file picker is fine:

Actually, Firefox itself is completely fine and I'm pretty sure it just uses Noto fonts as well. Fonts on Discord are also okay.

One thing I did notice is that "Noto Sans CJK" (JP/KR/SC/TC/etc) DOES appear thicker in the Font System Settings of KDE. This is what "Noto Sans Regular" looks like:

And this is what "Noto Sans CJK" looks like:

Notice that both "Regular" text do not appear to be the same. The CJK one is thicker.

Right now, a work-around is to set my main font as "Noto Sans CJK" but set it to "Light" instead of "Regular" and it looks pretty good:

But the Monospace Noto Sans CJK is thick as well with no option to make it lighter. Not as much of an issue as the graphical apps though:

This is a fresh install of Fedora 43 KDE btw. Hope someone can help me out here before I nuke this install for Bazzite, CachyOS, or something else lol

here is my config where window switching is located. any help would be appreciated.

Hello!
I'm using a G27 with oversteer and new-lg4ff. Archwiki entry for Logitech wheels: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Logitech_Racing_Wheel

Its working great and especially the oversteer GUI and UX is an huge improvement compared to that awful Logitech Windows drivers for that wheel.

My only issue is that the button mappings are wildly different compared to windows. Most games which support a wheel come with pretty good presets for the G27 which are nullified by the different button mappings on Linux. Remapping all the inputs in a game is a minor inconvience. But eg Dirt Rally 2.0 doesnt let you reconfigure buttons to navigate the menus. With that i'm stuck with confirming menu items by shifting into 6th gear. Which is additionally cumbersome because my shifter is worn out af and doesnt recognize inputs half of the time. Maybe there is some .ini of the game to manually edit those buttons but for now i want to leave that option as my last resort.

I already found out that you can reorder the mappings by dragging the buttons on a UI to the "correct" position with jstest-gtk. Which is alright if you have to do it once. Sadly it isnt persitent after reboots. Doing that dance everytime isnt exactly what i'm looking for.

So to finally ask my questions: Is there maybe a different way to remap those buttons persitently and globally by editing a file or with a program i havent found yet? Most remapping tools i found seem be made for keyboards, mice, xbox pad etc and often create an emulated output device which may conflict with the FFB from my understanding. If there isnt another way would it be possible to write a little script to automate the actions i do in the UI of jstest-gtk so its just a one-click solution before i want to use the wheel? Where would i find information how to do that?

Thank you!

Edit: Alright, i atleast fixed the physical shifter. I regreased it a couple of years ago and as it turns out i maybe have overdone it a bit. Cleaned up most of the grease and now every shift is beeing recognized again. Its also so much louder now.

I'm putting this out here just in case somebody else would be looking for it:

I put away my dear beloved an AMD 5800X3D CPU and my Nvidia RTX 3080 GPU because I'm taking a break from gaming. Instead, I installed a 5700G to conserve power. Upon booting for the first time, I had no internet connection. A quick glance at ip link and I noticed that the Ethernet interface no longer is called enp6s0 but enp5s0. Updating the interface name in my network config files solved the problem.

As a bonus, both the hardware and system clocks were also all over the place until I adjusted them...

I have no idea why a new CPU comes with these phenomena, but it did.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/57129095

Getting back into F@H and I'd like to move my dedicated folding rig from Windows back to Linux. I recall having issues with getting fan and voltage control + clock speeds to consistently behave correctly when I last attempted years ago on Ubuntu.

What's the suggested strategy for something that's fairly low effort and maintenance, without much hassle when switching GPUs around? Distro suggestion? Driver setup? Any third party tools? It'll mostly be Nvidia cards, and probably no CPU folding. I'd be remoting into it 95% of the time.

Thanks!

Heya,

I really like xfce as an out-of-the-box window manager to dump on any old machine. In my experience it makes a very noticeable difference compared to gnome, kde, and the likes performance wise. Sometimes you gotta fiddle with compositors to get rid of screen tearing, but that's about it.

Are there any you could recommend that are similar to xfce? The main priority is performance and out-of-the-box sane defaults and usability.

Thank you!

Hello Linux friends,

Looking for some help today. Some dummy who won't be named undersized the partition for his Debian VM at 32Gb. This was not enough space, as the VM is already out of storage. In Proxmox where the VM is hosted, I've already allocated extra space for this VM using Proxmox's built in GUI tools. The problem is, I'm not sure how to properly extend the partition within the VM itself, using the terminal only, without breaking everything (something I obviously don't want to do, lol).

I've done a bit of searching and people seem to be recommending tools like fdisk and resize2fs, both of which are not installed, and I'm afraid that I don't have any available space to install them. I'm also a bit of a noob and some of the language for drives and partitioning just flies over my head.

Any tips on:

• Clearing a bit of space on a Debian VM (that's mostly using Docker, no other programs/files running constantly)
• Resizing root partitions without too much headache
  Would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks, and have a beautiful and safe day!

Hi all, about to install latest LMDE with Cinnamon. I like my taskbar / dock on the left, to make better use of real estate.

Mint doesn't have that option to move it to the left.

Can I ask if anyone has done this, in a good, usable way?

Thanks for your help.

Last year I bought an M-Disc drive and a bunch of M-Discs and burnt all my files in Nextcloud to them as a backup.

It's a new year, I want to take any files added or modified in 2025 to burn a new disc.

I can work out how to get all files with a modified date in 2025, the problem is that if a file was moved into Nextcloud but wasn't changed, the modified date doesn't change. So I will miss files that someone has moved into Nextcloud without changing if the modified date is before 2025.

I can't use created date as literally all the files have a created date 1 Jan 2025 or later as the created date is when they synced from the server.

Normally I'd rsync to find changes but the current copy is spread across like 10 M-Discs, and reading each of those 100GB discs at CD reading speeds is going to be painful.

Does anyone have a better idea?

Edit: In case anyone is finding this later, I didn't get a better plan other than planning ahead. I copied each disc onto my hard drive (into a folder "Old replica"), copied the current state into a different directory ("New replica"), and ran Czkawka to remove files from "New replica" that are duplicates of files in "Old replica". And also used the Czkawka setting to delete empty directories once I deleted all those files.

What was left in "New replica" I burnt to disc, then Rsynced these back into the "Old replica" which I have for now left on my hard drive. Maybe if I run out of space I'll consider saving hashes or something for comparing, but for now this is just an extra copy I am storing because I didn't find a better way 🤷

Noobie linux user here trying to get this app to work with bottles/lutris/whatever but the same error pops up that I can't figure out. Any help please?

• Distro: Linux Mint 22.2 Cinnamon
• Apps tried: Bottles (flatpak) and Lutris
• Target app: Ginger (https://github.com/DominaeDev/ginger)

I've tried running it from different drives, in and out of the Bottles created folders, but the same error pops up no matter what gets changed:

Unhandled Exception: System.TypeLoadException: Could not load type of field 'Ginger.SpellChecker:s_Hunspell' (0) due to: Could not load file or assembly 'NHunspell, Version=1.2.5554.16953, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=1ac793ea843b4366' or one of its dependencies

I've also tried running the msi from the github and get the same error, with these extra lines:

02ac:err:msi:execute_script Execution of script 0 halted; action L"_3754A388_689E_46DF_B53A_3A872C23A5F5" returned 1627

02ac:err:msi:ITERATE_Actions Execution halted, action L"InstallExecute" returned 1627

02ac:err:msi:ITERATE_Actions Execution halted, action L"ExecuteAction" returned 1627

The zip file comes with the NHunspell.dll in a folder in the same directory, but i've got no idea how to point the programs at it. And I've gotten other programs running, but not this one. Hoping the solution is obvious and I just am too new to figure it out. Thanks in advance.

🙂‍↔️ in the screenshot you can see this shaking head emoji, as it is displayed in my terminal, it seems to not recognize the (newer) emoji made up of 2 unicode parts.

🙂‍+ ↔️ = 🙂‍↔️ 

Do I need to update the emoji, font, where do I get one? Is there a configuration option in terminals, like xfce-terminal, for this?

Other "bugs" include:

• the oil-barrel emoji is way to big for some reason.
• some emoji are colored, while some have only one color

What is your experience with emojis in linux terminals, equally inconsistent to mine?

Hello and happy holidays!

I've recently made the switch to Linux and I'm looking for a headset with 7.1 surround sound that'll also work with my PS5. I'm ok to switch to any distro as some won't work as well as others with the sound drivers. I'm currently using PopOS.

I did some research and even asked at a computer store but I found it difficult to get a reliable answer on a good set. I'd also like wireless and I'm ok with a usb over Bluetooth connection.

Can anyone point me in the direction of a great headset that'll work with what I'm looking for? Hunting for Linux things is certainly harder than that crappy os I switched from, but I know it's worth it.

Thank you!

I noticed that on some upper case letters the top part is cut off. It only happens for some letters, like E, B and P, and it does not happen in every application. As an example I added a screenshot when using "Easy Effects"

For posterity, here are my font settings and my system specs:

Hey there, I'm setting up my first custom arch install, having used Opensuse/Fedora/Tuxedo in the past with grub.

For now the arch install lives in a QEMU playground, but should eventually share an esp with Windows and Tuxedo. (I plan to shift Tuxedo from Grub to systemd-boot beforehand though)

For a this new setup, I've chosen systemd-boot and mkinitcpio with linux-lts. I've got the loader configs for sd-boot working with some trial&error. The default preset in mkinitcpio is still not doing what I want though.

Part of this is just me not understanding mountpoints in Arch. I'm used to the esp being mounted to "/boot/efi" with kernels and ramdisks living in something like "boot/efi/arch/{kernelver}-{kernelname}/kernel.img" and executables/UKIs living in "/boot/efi/EFI/Linux/arch/uki.efi". It seems that packages for kernels and ucode are hardcoded to the esp being at "/boot". Which does mess with me, but so be it. Mkinitcpio also has a disabled preset to put UKIs in "/efi", a mountpoint I have never seen used. Given that it references an "EFI"-folder in there, this seems to also want to be the esp-root.

Could someone explain the mountpoint setup in arch to me? And also, is there a point/way to bend the paths to use /boot/efi, or am I better served to just mount the esp at /boot and accept the difference?

Thanks in advance.

I am not sure how many files that this happens to, but it has happened to two that I have tried in the last few days, one .sh file and another program/executable. I am logged in as root - Linux Mint 21.2 When I try to allow executing as a program it unticks itself (as in this video) I also get 'permission denied' in terminal, as root and i have tried

chmod +x filename

and

sudo chmod -v +x filename.sh

sudo chown --verbose 1000 filename.sh

But still get denied.. What am I doing wrong here or how can I fix this?

I've spent considerable time configuring my Linux system (1) and I would like to have the exact same system on another PC (2).
What would be the best way to do that?
Hardware on (2) is different, but tested compatible with the kernel.
(2) has a smaller drive size, so simply dd'ing the entire drive from a live USB won't work.

Here's what I'm planning:

• install same distro on (2), using the same username as on (1)
• create a list of installed packages on (1)
• install same packages on (2) using the package manager
• copy /home and /etc from (1) to an external EXT4 drive
• boot (2) from a live USB and mount the external drive
• delete /home and /etc on (2), then copy them over from (1)

Will this cause permission issues? Is there a quicker way?

I have a couple of Brother MFCs around the shop and farm, and while they do work with Linux, I'm constantly fighting with them for scaling, orientation and printing really light half the time. Maybe I'm not using the right drivers, but I've tried several as recommended on the Archwiki (even though I'm on Fedora, mostly) and can't seem to get any joy out of them.

I just want a basic MFC BW laser that will scan, copy and print spreadsheets reliably. I have a LJ4000 at home that works great but of course that's not exactly something you go out and buy anymore.

Anyone have a known good current MFC they can recommend, and the driver package it uses to match? Goddam, I hate printers.

Context: Windows on Niri doesn't span across monitors, and the dev doesn't seem very interested in adding this feature (https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/issues/2309)

I am trying to setup Flameshot on Niri. While Flameshot's window spawns with the full 2-monitor dimensions, it can only appear on one screen due to the limitation of Niri. I currently have a temporary-solution script where I position the window differently based on which monitor my cursor is on.

Is there a way I can split the Flameshot window in 2 so it can appear on both screens? I don't know if there exists some kiosk compositors like cage that does this.

Hi again

I'm struggling with setting up mangohud now (or really any FPS limiter and performance overlay). Specifically, I can't limit my FPS or display my FPS (and other metrics) to even know what it is.

Any pointers? I've tried:

• Followed the mangohud install steps on github. I didn't install one of those demos because I needed to compile from source but I couldn't find any explicit tutorial or makefile..
• Tried switching between several Proton versions (GE just doesn't work for me I found)
• Tried a billion different ways to run it like with "mangohud" prefix and with variables. Nothing. I think gamescope also doesn't work, I'm not sure.
• Watched several Youtube videos about Mangohud and Goverlay, they weren't really useful.
• Tried Medal Of Honor Airborne on Lutris (local install)
• Tried Webbed on Steam (via steam install)
• Tried heaven benchmark (installed via their .run file)
• The FPS limit switch hotkey (shift F1) works on the goverlay demo cube thing
• The HUD toggle hotkey (shift F12) works on the goverlay demo

More screenshots with various things I tried:

I've been trying this for probably close to 12 hours...Idk what to try anymore :-/

I'm on Linux Mint 22.2, Cinnamon 6.4.8. The laptop is a Thinkpad T470p.

Not sure if this is the right community for this, lmk.

Hi again

I'm struggling with setting up mangohud now (or really any FPS limiter and performance overlay). Specifically, I can't limit my FPS or display my FPS (and other metrics) to even know what it is.

Any pointers? I've tried:

• Followed the mangohud install steps on github. I didn't install one of those demos because I needed to compile from source but I couldn't find any explicit tutorial or makefile..
• Tried switching between several Proton versions (GE just doesn't work for me I found)
• Tried a billion different ways to run it like with "mangohud" prefix and with variables. Nothing. I think gamescope also doesn't work, I'm not sure.
• Watched several Youtube videos about Mangohud and Goverlay, they weren't really useful.
• Tried Medal Of Honor Airborne on Lutris (local install)
• Tried Webbed on Steam (via steam install)
• Tried heaven benchmark (installed via their .run file)
• The FPS limit switch hotkey (shift F1) works on the goverlay demo cube thing
• The HUD toggle hotkey (shift F12) works on the goverlay demo

More screenshots with various things I tried:

I've been trying this for probably close to 12 hours...Idk what to try anymore :-/

I'm on Linux Mint 22.2, Cinnamon 6.4.8. The laptop is a Thinkpad T470p.

Not sure if this is the right community for this, lmk.

Hi all

EDIT / TL;DR / Solution: I think the calibration is working. I checked my measurement adaptation using the Power Statistics in Linux Mint and this is the new one now:

Seems like it's adapting, it's just slow. If this doesn't work, I'll update again. Cheers!

I just changed the external battery of this T470p I bought. The old one was at about 70% battery life and was smaller at 4.4Ah. New one is around 6.34Ah.

The battery lasts almost double the time now so it's great, but, the % reading in Gnome Power Manager (bottom right tray) is way off. The laptop dies at around 40%. Ofc the estimated time left is also way off.

I did buy the battery for around 30% cheaper than I find it here from Aliexpress: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32637096491.html (perhaps it's just weird, but it does last longer)

I tried

• Drained the battery by playing youtube then recharged over night.
• Installed and recalibrared with TLP (let it discharge with TLP running, plug in while off, leave it plugged over night) (this uninstalled power-profiles-daemon - I later uninstalled TLP and reinstalled that package).
• Checked BIOS for a battery recalibration utility. I found none unfortunately. I looked everywhere including Config (there was no Power menu there). I also looked in the hardware diagnostic software that I can access instead of booting into BIOS. I believe the key was F10.
• Checked the settings app, nothing.
• Checked online, everyone says use TLP or discharge manually repeatedly without charging partially in between.

This is what my discharge profile looks like

Laptop with old battery next to it:

These are my battery readings

marin@ThinkpadT470P:~$ acpi -i
Battery 0: Discharging, 84%, 04:45:31 remaining
Battery 0: design capacity 6282 mAh, last full capacity 6282 mAh = 100%

marin@ThinkpadT470P:~$ sudo tlp-stat -b
***
TLP 1.6.1 --------------------------------------------

+++ Battery Care
Plugin: thinkpad
Supported features: charge thresholds, recalibration
Driver usage:
* natacpi (thinkpad_acpi) = active (charge thresholds, recalibration)
Parameter value ranges:
* START_CHARGE_THRESH_BAT0/1:  0(off)..96(default)..99
* STOP_CHARGE_THRESH_BAT0/1:   1..100(default)

+++ ThinkPad Battery Status: BAT0 (Main / Internal)
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/manufacturer                   = LGC
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/model_name                     = 45N1738
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/cycle_count                    =      3
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/energy_full_design             =  74050 [mWh]
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/energy_full                    =  74050 [mWh]
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/energy_now                     =  59250 [mWh]
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/power_now                      =  13722 [mW]
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/status                         = Discharging

/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_control_start_threshold =      0 [%]
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_control_end_threshold   =    100 [%]
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_behaviour               = [auto] inhibit-charge force-discharge

Charge                                                      =   80.0 [%]
Capacity                                                    =  100.0 [%

I checked, I do not have an internal battery installed.

I also repasted the CPU and GPU when I opened it.

Thanks again for helping me pick a distro in my other post! Everything is up and running nicely with Linux mint. I even set up Lutris, Steam, and a bunch of utility apps. I still need to set an FPS limit somehow because this thing PULLS in old games.

PS I promise that trackpad is clean lol, looks so dirty in the piciture.