Show on using Linux and foss tooling for absolutely everything, as much as possible. Still a new show, which is self-hosted on free software, and takes a more project focus towards Linux tools: actually using them and sharing what works + what doesn't work over time. Please do share you throughs and suggestions!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/30039870

(00:42)

Detailed Show notes, because tons of links this episode

(01:38)

Air Conditioned Nightmare - Mr. Bungle

(02:51)

SFTPGo - Simple Folder Sharing

(05:49)

Sponsor - Ameridroid. Use LINUXPREPPER at checkout.

(06:45)

ChapterTool - Show and Chapter Notes for Audio & Video Platforms

(07:49)

openDAW - Browser-based Multi-track Recording

(09:13)

Kanboard - Project Management

(18:09)

• Offline Tools. What do you use?
• Dead Tech. What do you use?

(18:34)

No more Skype. Try Signal!

(25:58)

Figlet, Toilet - Terminal ASCII Artwork

(27:15)

Meme

(27:56)

Dead Tech - What do you use? Take a quick survey

(29:18)

Offline Tooling. What do you use? Take a quick survey

(29:49)

Epson Ecotank Printers. Can be converted to Sublimation

(34:07)

Kill Doctor Lucky - A print and play boardgame

(35:43)

Root as a Print and Play game. Insanely popular as a modern, commercial board game

(36:04)

Skull card game. Classic bar game, played on napkins, etc.

(39:03)

Paper Circuits

(44:08)

• Pinecil Soldering Iron
  • Soldering is Easy web comic by Mitch Altman
  • Fine Soldering Tip Set
  • Large Soldering Tip Set
• PinePower Travel Charger w/ International Adapters
• PinePower 120w Desktop Charger

(51:21)

• Paperless-NGX - digitize that paper
• Kavita
• Komga
• Codex
• Calibre-Web
• LibreOffice Suite
• pdfarranger. Fork of pdf-shuffler: a small python-gtk application, which helps the user to merge or split PDF documents and rotate, crop and rearrange their pages using an interactive and intuitive graphical interface. It is a front end for pikepdf. Available on Windows, as flatpak, snap, in repos, etc.
• pdftk - terminal app for universally password protecting pdf files.
• pdfbook2 - terminal app to convert your pdf document page layout into a printable book, or zine.

(56:01)

Ronin Solo RPG

(57:20)

Notorious Solo RPG

(58:12)

Snake Acid web browser game

(59:23)

• Lutris, which includes Itch support, Steam, GOG, Epic, local games, etc.

So after trying out Mint on my old laptop for a few months I wanted to go straight to Linux on my new build what with it being surprisingly user friendly once past the initial jank.

---The build---
MOBO: Gigabyte b850 aorus elite wifi7
CPU: AMD 9950X3D
GPU: Powercolour 9070xt
RAM Corsair vengance 64GB 5200MHz DDR5
Storage: WD Black SN850X 2TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 Gen4 x4 NVMe SSD

So naturally everything is now on fire.

I started with Mint Cinnamon edition which did install after some initial teething (Boot USB on safemode) but just refused to work with the wifi adapter on that motherboard, it also couldn't see the GPU but I never got to trying to resolve that since the Mint setup is pretty wifi dependant and I wasn't sure it wouldn't fix itself once it could finish sorting itself out.

I then had a friend who's been using Linux for 10 years (Some distro called tumbleweed?) reccomend I try Ubuntu as it generaly supports more hardware. It did work with wifi right out of the box but had this weird issue where it could recognize my GPU and load the right driver but then just give up and use the IGPU on my CPU anyway. Also janky with software with steam (Which I never had issues with on Mint on my laptop) just refusing to work properly and at one point getting into a cage match with snap, even when installed from steams own website rather than the application manager (with an uninstall of the old one in between of course)

We spent a good couple of hours getting slapped with weird behaviours and bugs my friend had never seen before until calling it a day.

So once again I'm here politely asking what the fuck linux!? Seriously though what do I do here, I can just about manage running windows software on afformentioned laptop mint install but linux as a whole just seems to hate this hardware setup.

Alright I'm just going with a stripped down version of windows 10, I've spent 2 days trying things from here and from that friend and from random forum posts of people with the same issue and at this point it seems no one has a consistent fix and I don't feel like building an entire operating system from scratch (nor would I know how)

Good old ed(1). I don't know why, but every now and then I like to edit my files using ed(1). Are there frequent ed(1) users around here? What is your motivation to use it?

Let's say I had a project that required me to have some files as well as a Live CD for Linux. Could I add the files to my bootable image and access them in the live session?

If I want to install something, I can either do "dnf install [program name]" or "flatpak install [program name]". Same goes for when I want to remove a program. And for flatpak at least, I typed ONE WORD from a game I was uninstalling because I didn't remember to exact tag and flatpak asked me "do you want to install [full tag of game]? y/n" like HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE THAT IS SO CONVENIENT

Maybe a dumb question. But is this just a matter of copying over? I have 6 hdds I've accumulated and want all the data from them on one big drive now. They are all ntfs as they are from windows, but I am going to boot from my mint drive to move the files, just so windows isnt running or accessing anything on the drives while I move the data. I'm transitioning to full linux, but I want to consolidate these drives first. I dont want to clone drives, so no dd here, just copying files from 6 different drives onto 1.

I have a new WD Blue 1TB ssd hard drive that doesn't want to get formatted or mounted. When I attach the drive via USB I get an error message of:

Unable to Mount 1.0 Tb volume
An operation is already pending

Eventually I get:

Unable to Mount 1.0 Tb volume
timeout was reached

I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T570 running Linux Mint 22.1 Xia base. "GParted" and "Disks" don't see the drive. Is there something I can do to access the disc or is it toast?

cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/41380613

What's new in this release:

• User handles in shared memory for better performance.
• Improvements to TIFF image support.
• More work on the new PDB backend.
• Various bug fixes.

I’m working on a custom Linux Mint ISO (using Cubic) for a dedicated system with auto-login. I’m trying to automate Vino (VNC server) setup during installation using preseed, but I’m running into two issues:

1. Changing Vino settings in preseed commands

I need to set org.gnome.Vino authentication-methods to ['vnc'] for the autologin user. I’ve tried variations of:

in-target su -c "gsettings set org.gnome.Vino authentication-methods \"['vnc']\"" username

But the setting doesn’t persist. I’ve also tested in-target sh -c and direct gsettings calls without luck.

What’s the correct way to apply gsettings changes for a specific user during preseed?

2. Autostarting Vino Server

I need /usr/lib/vino/vino-server to start automatically after login. Since this is an auto-login system, I’d prefer a method that:

• Works via preseed (e.g., adding to startup apps).
• Can be toggled later via Cinnamon’s startup settings (if possible).

What’s the best way to set this up? .desktop file in ~/.config/autostart/? Or another approach? Preferably, it would be more easily configurable in userspace, but if this is the only option then I understand.

I created a simple Bash script that will always disable the default/internal monitor on your laptop when using AR glasses (or any other external monitor). I find this useful for when using AR glasses such as the XReal One which allows you to change the mode from regular mode to ultra-wide mode and when doing this, it will act as your unplugging the XReal ones and plugging in XReal one again in a new mode, causing the interal laptop display to become enabled.

To keep the laptop display always off, weather the laptop lid is either closed or open, this simple bash script will always disable the laptop screen every X seconds (You can change it by changing the wait variable)

Simply copy this script and create a new bash script such as disable-display.sh, make the script file executable and add it to your startup applications and it will run in the background. You will need to run xrandr command with all of your displays enabled to get the names of the displays and change the variable names in the script accordingly.

NOTE: This script may not work with a full Wayland setup and may only work on X11.

Enjoy

#!/bin/bash

#RUN xrandr TO GET THE NAMES OF THE DISPLAYS AND SET THE VARIABLES TO THESE NAMES

readonly default_display="eDP"
readonly external_display="USB-C-0"

readonly wait=5

while true; do
    #Check if there is an external display connected
    if xrandr | grep -q "$external_display connected"; then
        #Disable the internal display
        xrandr --output $default_display --off
    fi

    sleep $wait
done

Just a useless post but... I wanted to state, how much more fun and involved it is computing with Linux. I'm a very basic user - but still, learning more and more about this OS and how it operates, and most importantly, how awesome FOSS is, is very enjoyable. I feel like I can do anything, if I have the initiative to learn it. My dream is to be able to program something useful, and contribute to the FOSS community someday.

I hope more people can feel this same feeling, that using this OS is much more the feel of computing as it's supposed to be, at least to me!

A video by SavvyNik that covers some of the highlights from the following recently published scientific article - Wolves in the Repository: A Software Engineering Analysis of the XZ Utils Supply Chain Attack

Trying to set up clamonacc to watch /home, /tmp and /storage (where I mount other drives). It keeps failing due to ERROR: ClamInotif: could not add element to hash table for ... that causes ERROR: ClamInotif: issue when adding watch for /home/lojcs and ultimately ERROR: ClamInotif: could not watch path '/home/', Invalid argument passed to function.

The initial error was triggered by the steam folder, empty cache directory of starship, firefox cache directory, my 'Games' folder and after that I stopped excluding the directories. I don't see the point in having on-access scan if I need to carve out large chunks of the filesystem to make it work for reasons I don't understand. I don't see anything common with those directories or what makes them different than the ones it has no problem watching.

Has anyone successfully set up clamonacc? This is like the 3rd time I'm trying in the last couple years and it never works.

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Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:48 Sponsor: Proton VPN
02:26 GNOME
05:27 Cinnamon
07:09 XFCE
09:04 LXQt
10:57 Deepin
12:55 KDE Plasma
15:13 Cosmic
17:33 Budgie
18:55 MATE
20:43 Pantheon
22:46 Unity
24:57 Sponsor: Tuxedo Computers

#linuxdesktop #linux #tierlist

Spring has arrived in all its glory

So why not adorn your desktop with a floral background?

Over the past few months, I haven’t had any significant amount of time to either sit in Blender and create or engage in other creative pursuits for that matter. But the other day, when the sun was shining and the bumblebees were gently buzzing around the garden, I got the idea to photograph some of the flowers that had blossomed. When I later looked at these creations, it felt only natural to add them to my Wallpaper git-repo.

For full transparency; I am not a photographer and these pictures were taken with a mobile phone.

These images are some of those found in the "Nature" folder. All wallpapers in the entire repo are CC:BY — free to use, share, and modify as long as the creator, in this case me, is attributed.

Recently came across this magazine from the Linux Format on a second hand vintage shop and obviously had to go for it! These magazines are still produced these to this day btw. However, when I went to linuxformat.com after receiving my magazine to check out some of their other ones, I saw that they were in fact just celebrating their 25-year anniversary and have put out a digital version of the very magazine I bought - for everyone to view digitally!

Their announcement:

25-years ago in this month of May, back in 2000 (just after the giant Y2K meltdown that flipped every plane upsidedown) Linux Format was first published. To help celebrate and remember this momentous pinnacle of publishing prowess (and while we still have server access) we'll be popping out a few classic issues of Linux Format in PDF format. As we already have it to hand here's issue LXF001 with a very young looking Nick Veitch.

The magazine can be found digitally at: https://linuxformat.com/files/pdfs/LXF001.pdf

Either way, I had no idea of the timing but thought it was a fun experience and worthy to share here. Enjoy a step back into memory-lane!

Have a great rest of your day!

When I last updated Kinoite (1-2 days ago), the only packages that were updated were kernel related things. Going from 6.14.4-200 to 6.14.5-300.

When I try to boot into the new deployment, the system just hangs on the plymouth boot screen and I have to do a hard reset on the computer. No logs are generated, so I'm either not getting out of grub or I'm stuck in the iniramfs stage (but that usually prints some errors and drops you into a rescue shell). It's so weird. It just sits there.

My old deployment works fine though. Anybody else experienced something similar? Or know of a way I can get some more info out of the system?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29272849

Timestamps

(00:07) Welcome

What is included in the episode, and what will be released as part of episode 8 later this month. Revised description of what Linux Prepper is.

(04:50) Ameridroid Sponsor

• Home Assistant Green
• Home Assistant Green w/ Skyconnect Zigbee & Matter Controller
• Skyconnect Zigbee & Matter Controller

Use LINUXPREPPER coupon.

(06:22) Trivia Challenges at Linuxfest Northwest

• Saturday Winners
• Sunday Winners
• Linux Unplugged 612, around 7 minutes in.

(17:26) On tabling at my first conference.

Gratitude for meeting so many people and having this shared experience together! Ways to support me, especially in sharing the episodes to social media or with friends that would find this interesting!

Thank you to those who are donating to support the show!

• Paypal

(24:45) Tahoe LAFS

Decentralized object storage

• Request to mirror federated storage locally in Nextcloud server
• Join our attempt to self-host Tahoe for a year!
• Is it worth hosting decentralized services for others?
• Is storing encrypted data for other people not worth it?
• Have you hosted distributed tools between yourself and other people's servers? Did it succeed? Fail?

(45:54) Alby Hub Fundraising to register a Self-hosted node.

Thank you to those supporting the show on Podcasting 2.0 clients.

• Direct Donation link
• See related forum post

(47:20) Sequoia Fabrica Makerspace

• See related forum post

• Wiki for Sequoia Fabrica

• Networking layout of the space

• How to Host Events

• FAQ

• Noisebridge Hackerspace

• Spacebridge launches since 2024

• Noisebridge's infrastructure Ansible

• List of International Hackerspaces in your Area.

I had a bunch of issues setting it up to work on my laptop, but now that I have I would like to compile all the bits and stuff together into one guide!

source: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/principis/howdy-beta/ and https://github.com/boltgolt/howdy/issues/1004

1. install dependencies

downloading: SEE GITHUB ISSUE SECTION “DOWNLOAD DEPENDENCIES” (I can’t post the links!)

installing:

cd ~/Downloads

sudo dnf install \
python3-elevate-0.1.3-3.20240124git78e82a8.fc41.noarch.rpm \
python3-keyboard-0.13.5-3.fc41.noarch.rpm \
python3-pyv4l2-1.0.2-3.20240124gitf12f0b3.fc41.x86_64.rpm

installing opencv (note that I had to use pip install for opencv-python, so try that as well!)

sudo dnf install -y opencv opencv-devel opencv-python

sudo dnf install -y v4l-utils

When I tried to install howdy from “howdy-beta, an error pops up with “nothing provides python3dist(ffmpeg-python)...”

BettridgeCameron on GitHub is the holy saviour with this fix:

dnf install https://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/packages/python-ffmpeg-python/0.2.0/8.fc41/noarch/python3-ffmpeg-python-0.2.0-8.fc41.noarch.rpm

2. installing howdy

remove non-beta howdy (it doesn’t seem to work for Fedora 41+)

sudo dnf remove howdy

sudo dnf copr remove principis/howdy

install beta howdy

sudo dnf copr enable principis/howdy-beta

sudo dnf —refresh install howdy

3. use sudo howdy config

device-path: use ls /dev/video* or v4l2-ctl —list-devices to see all device paths and test each of them using sudo howdy test (for me it was /dev/video2)

settings to change “freedy237” recommends: (note that howdy-beta uses different words e.g. “abort if” rather than “ignore”, make sure you have howdy-beta! This stumped me for a while)

detection_notice = true
timeout_notice = true
no_confirmation = false
suppress_unknown = false
abort_if_ssh = true
abort_if_lid_closed = true
disabled = false
use_cnn = false
workaround = input
certainty = 4.0
timeout = 10
device_path = /dev/video0 # Replace with your detected device
warn_no_device = true
max_height = 480
frame_width = 640
frame_height = 480
dark_threshold = 80
recording_plugin = opencv
device_format = v4l2
force_mjpeg = true
exposure = -1
device_fps = 15
rotate = 1

4. use sudo howdy add to add a face.

Name it anything you want, I go with names like “glasses” and “no-glasses” since…I wear glasses. Some random person on GitHub with a multi-monitor setup has it set to looking at different monitors. Whatever you want, doesn’t really matter.

You can use sudo howdy test to check if it works. A red outline means it’s an unrecognised face, a green outline with the name means it is a recognises face. no outline means not a face. Also check that whether it is a “dark frame” or not vs a “scan frame”. You might need to set the dark threshold higher using config. (this was an issue I faced as well, for me 80 works)

5. howdy on login

sudo nano /etc/pam.d/gdm-password

add: auth sufficient pam_howdy.so

a similar thing can be done for gnome’s password pop ups (e.g. when installing an app) by going to “polkit-1”

6. howdy on sudo (you might not want this!)

sudo nano /etc/pam.d/sudo

add: auth sufficient pam_howdy.so no_confirmation

7. permissions

sudo chmod o+rw /dev/video*

sudo chmod -R o+rx /usr/share/howdy/dlib-data

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/howdy

sudo usermod -aG video gdm

sudo chmod 666 /dev/video*

sudo chmod 755 /usr/lib64/security/pam_howdy.so

8. fix SELinux perms for login screen

create “howdy.te” sudo nano howdy.te

add: (as seen on fedora copr repo)

module howdy 1.0;

require {
    type lib_t;
    type xdm_t;
    type v4l_device_t;
    type sysctl_vm_t;
    class chr_file map;
    class file { create getattr open read write };
    class dir add_name;
}

#============= xdm_t ==============
allow xdm_t lib_t:dir add_name;
allow xdm_t lib_t:file { create write };
allow xdm_t sysctl_vm_t:file { getattr open read };
allow xdm_t v4l_device_t:chr_file map;

compile and insert it

checkmodule -M -m -o howdy.mod howdy.te

semodule_package -o howdy.pp -m howdy.mod

semodule -i howdy.pp

i've been having problems with xfce where themes with rounded corners show a black box behind the whisker menu and even with the following code in ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css

}#whiskermenu-window { border-radius: 10px; border: none; box-shadow: none; border-image: none; background-image: none; outline: none; }

searches on duckduckgo returned nothing but after a few months with this problem i found a solution on google on the zorin os forums

the modifications: first, in the gtk.css file: __#whiskermenu-window frame>border { border-radius: 10px; border: none; box-shadow: none; border-image: none; background-image: none; outline: none; }_

then in the whisker menu properties, turn the opactiy to 99

no idea how or why this works but it just works :)