Linux Questions

So I'm on ZorinOS, and I go to

Zorin Appearance > Interface >

And in that Menu is the option ""Left Super Key".

I've been led to believe that's where I assign the action of the windows key. Except it's greyed out.

I'd like it to do exactly what it does on WindowsXP and Windows 7, where a start menu pops up.

At one time it did that. Then now it's a totally different action that I can't quite explain. It's like it shows every single open app in a zoomed out view, and you can click one to zoom in on that window. I know, my description sucks.

But I can't select Left Super Key, and I don't know linux well enough to know why.

Hello, I recently bought an old Lenovo Thinkpad X130e (ca. 2012) and tried installing Linux Mint ver. 22.1 Xfce edition into the laptop's HDD and received a "Linux Mint unable to install GRUB in dev/sda" error that only let me boot into a GRUB terminal after rebooting. Is there an easily available installation guide/manual for this laptop I could take a look at? I've tried adjusting the BIOS' UEFI/boot settings but haven't had any luck. I figure there's a way to manually configure the HDD to have a bootable partition during installation but I'm not sure what I'm doing exactly.

So I am ricing my first linux desktop, I want to blur the background of alacritty when I am using it Ive managed to make it transparent

Recently, my NixOS system has started taking around 2 minutes to boot. The delay happens when stopping system-udevd and multiple USB errors are thrown during it. I've tried booting with zero usb devices connected, but the issue still occurs. I have also tried updating my mobo, disabling XHCI handoff, legacy USB support, and the builtin wireless chipset. I haven't even been able to identify what USB port could be causing the issue. Motherboard is an MSI X670E TOMAHAWK WIFI.

Hastebin dump with the journalctl, lsusb -t, lsusb, lspci, and usb-devices output

Full dmesg dump

I would really appreciate any help, I've been losing my mind trying to fix this.

Edit: I looked at some dumps on linux-hardware.org, it seems likely that its the bluetooth chipset causing the issue. I'd already disabled this in the motherboard settings, but that apparently isn't enough.

If anybody knows how to make systemd-udevd ignore this device, I would really appreciate it.

Edit 2: Stumbled onto this post from someone with a Gigabyte X670 which seems to use the same BT chipset, which led to this post which recommend unplugging the computer for a bit.

I left it unplugged overnight and lo and behold the next morning the issue is gone. What a bizarre problem.

Reposting my question here to cast a wider net

I'm using Ubuntu on my Dell XPS 17, connected to a Dell Dock via USB-C, that has 2 monitors connected with Displayport. Sometimes on signal acquisition, screens remain black, and I have to lock the session (Win + L), wait a few seconds, then wake up the laptop, so signal may or may not be correctly acquired (otherwise I'd do it again until it works)

On Windows, there's this shortcut, Win + Ctrl + Shift + B, that acts as if the screen were disconnected/reconnected. It may help with my signal acquisition problem. Is there an equivalent on Ubuntu/Linux, please ?

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/37507334

I'm trying to generate AppArmor policies to secure my "major/internet-facing" programs.
Most of those programs are Flatpaks.
Flatpaks already have their own sandboxing mechanism, which uses bwrap and XDG portals.
Does AppArmor have any weird interactions with Flatpak, e. g. blocking too much, or blocking too little, or being unable to block anything without rendering the whole program unusable?

It works fine on X, but switching to Wayland grays out the option to select which window.

What Kernel are you guys using?

I have seen some people claiming that custom kernels like zen cachyos offer better battery life and performance.

Is it true ?

Sorry if this is not the right community to ask this, but I just wondered this today.

Users often think of Linux as being more complicated to use than something like Windows or macOS, but I’m sure there are plenty of things made easier in Linux than the other two more common consumer OSes.

What are some that come to mind for you?

I really appreciate the GrapheneOS security model with detailed permissions for every app, including internet access.

I'd like to have something similar to that on my main OS. I like to be able to install an app without trusting it. So that I can be more lax with the FOSS projects and the proprietary stuff I use.

I use my PC for gaming, programming and personal stuff. I have been using Fedora for quite some time.

I know that QubesOS exists, and would give me the highest security and privacy guarantees, but i'd prefer something more elegant. I havent tried Qubes in 10 years though 🤔

Am I limited to Flatpak with Flatseal and similar solutions to Flatseal for AppImage?

Edit: I have a ryzen iGPU and a seperate dedicated GPU

I find virt-manager hard to use, and not easily configurable, XML is the easiest but I don't always want to configure my vms in either a command-line or XML directly, is there any graphical alternative to virt-manager that uses the entire or part of the stack?

[spiderunderurbed@daspidercave:~]$ distrobox enter debian
Error response from daemon: failed to create task for container: failed to create shim task: OCI runtime create failed: runc create failed: unable to start container process: error during container init: error mounting "tmpfs" to rootfs at "/sys/fs/selinux": create mountpoint for /sys/fs/selinux mount: mkdirat /var/lib/docker/overlay2/21421daf7f99a368b01031a78a899d0a459f341e9e942698981d2499a9aa042c/merged/sys/fs/selinux: operation not permitted: unknown
Error: failed to start containers: debian
[ble: exit 1]

How do i fix? This was created normally, the container, I dont know what more information to add

When I change my laptop's brightness using the brightness keys, it changes them in 5% increments. I would like to reduce this.

Does anyone know if this is possible?

i'm trying to basically make a shortcut for krabby (see link) so i dont have to type <krabby name (pokemon name)> to see a specified pokemon. basically how can i make a script that passes the and to the output of what i type next?

Creating *.desktop files for WIndows/Wine applications, specify sometimes a Icon like this:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Game to start
Comment=Play this game on Steam
Exec=steam steam://rungameid/738520
Icon=steam_icon_738520
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Game;

with Icon=steam_icon_738520. Is this extracted from the *.exe file and how do i get the name mentioned here? I know, that i can use the path to a *.png, but i would prefer to use the *.exe file itself.

the cava module i have in my polybar config isnt showing bars. instead it is showing zeros while no audio is played, then numbers while audio is streaming, executing the polybar.sh file returns the error Failed to parse contents (reason: 1 unclosed action block(s))

here is the script i used. l

i cannot for the life of me figure out the problem.

I'm backing up my windows device today and plan on installing a Linux distro. My primary use for this PC is gaming, though I do complete some banking and other tasks I find cumbersome on my phone.

My technical skill level is "knows enough to get into the shit, but not enough to get out." I did use Ubuntu exclusively for a period of about 3-5 years over a decade ago.

One con I've found regarding this OS is that it has "no browser in Live environment," but I have no idea what that means.

If anyone has experience with this OS or good tips/recommendations, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks in advance.

I've been daily driving Kubuntu for ages now (currently on 24.10), and I've noticed that updates take a while for seemingly no reason.

The downloads are slower than my internet is capable of, but they happen fast enough. It's just that some packages take longer than I would expect on the "unpacking" step.

For example, anytime there's a new kernel release or new headers, apt downloads the packages fast enough, but the unpacking takes time with seemingly no resource usage. No increased CPU load (for possible inflating of a compressed archive), no IOWAIT warnings, my NVMe disk shows very little throughput (and can handle much faster disk operations, like downloading games via Steam), stuff like that. The system seems to be at idle, and yet the unpacking of some packages just... takes a while.

It's not like it's a huge issue. It's only maybe an extra 30+ seconds, but it's got me wondering if there's anything I could do to improve it.

sudo apt clean hasn't had any effect, and my Google searches are of people complaining of either slow download speeds or 30+ minute delays that end up being failing drives.

Anyone have ideas?

After an automatic update+reboot of my Debian server my Jellyfin container doesn't work anymore. When I try to run it from the command line I get: Error: crun: make '/home/serve/.local/share/containers/storage/vfs/dir/[string]' private: Permission denied: OCI permission denied

Here's the list of updated packages, in case it's useful: base-files buildah curl dns-root-data intel-microcode libc-bin libc-l10n libc6 libcurl3-gnutls libcurl4 libmariadb3 libpam-systemd libpq5 librabbitmq4 libsystemd-shared libsystemd0 libudev1 linux-image-amd64 locales mariadb-common systemd systemd-sysv tzdata udev vim vim-common vim-runtime vim-tiny wget

I tried doing some searching and it looks like a podman issue, but with no real fix for it? Not sure tbh. Do I need to nuke my container and start again? Or is there a way to fix this while keeping my config?

Small update: I did some digging around in the directories that error out and found that in ~/.local/share/containers/storage/volumes both the jellyfin-cache and jellyfin-config folders are owned by 100000, but they were the only ones. I tried changing ownership to my user but the error persists.

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.

I have used bash, zsh, ksh, and now powershell. I am by no means an expert on UNIX shells. I could get all my work done on any one of these. My main shell is Zsh with some oh-my-zsh plugins because I'm lazy. What can you do in powershell that you can't do in any other shell? Also, does the shell you use even matter? Sorry if this is a dumb question.

Is anyone familiar with gum?

I have a simple:

while true; do
    CHOICE=$(gum choose "one" "two" "three")
    case "$CHOICE" in
        "one")
            <do something>
        "two")
            <do something>
        "three")
            <do something>
    esac
done

If the user hits ESC, gum displays "nothing selected" and exits.

Is there a way to disable the "nothing selected"? I tried redirecting 2>/dev/null but it suppresses the entire menu. I also tried adding $'\x1b' to the case, but it did nothing.

I also tried adding:

    if [ -z "$CHOICE" ]; then
        exit 0
    fi

directly after CHOICE=$(gum choose...).

No dice.