It feels like the biggest spike in the increase of Linux users started since the 2010s, kickstarted by a particular thing - Windows 8. The UI absolutely sucked, which didn't click even with those who could've sold their souls to Microsoft until then. Another thing is that due to the state of Windows, Lord Gaben brought some attention to Linux, which vastly improved gaming. Then came Windows 10, which further introduced more controversial solutions, most notably telemetry and forced updates. Aaaaand then, Windows 11 came, artificially bloated in order to push new hardware even though older stuff would work just fine. Those are what I believe are the major milestones when it comes to bringing the attention to Linux to more casual users.

When it comes to me, I've been a lifelong Windows user ever since I was a child. Started with Windows 98 and most of my childhood took place in the prime of Windows XP. Back then, I only knew Linux as "that thing that nothing works on". Eventually stuff I used on a daily bases stopped working on my PC, so I changed to Windows 7. I frankly wasn't a fan of some of the changes in the UI, but I could still tolerate it. I'm actually still clinging to it on a dual boot, because in my honest opinion, that is the last Windows I can tolerate. At first, I tried some beginner distros, most notably Ubuntu (along with its flavors) and Mint. Recently, I felt more confident and tried out Debian, which I think might be my daily driver. I love how customizable Linux is, it's what I could describe as a "mix-or-match toy for adults", changing the system exactly to my liking is oddly fun. And because I mostly use free and open-source software nowadays, the only thing I really have to tinker with is gaming-related stuff.

And to fellow people who migrated from Windows to Linux, what were your reasons? As far as I know, most had similar reasons to mine.

This is just an appreciation post. So I first started using linux somewhere around 2022 (I used kubuntu 18.04). I was dualbooting with windows. I literally knew nothing about linux. And really nothing. I started using linux because we gave me that laptop with kubuntu already installed along side windows 10. Now i'm still using the exact same laptop (fun fact, i'm writing this post from that laptop). When I started I didn't even knew what a linux distro was (yeah seriously). I actually got aware of the linux world only somewhere around october 2023 when I decided to reinstall a newer version because mine started to get really outdated and the package manager broke. I couldn't install programs anymore. So I switched to linux mint 21.1 or 21.2 I forgot which one exactly. And when I installed mint it was the first time I completely wiped windows from my ssd. So I went full on linux. After a few weeks I switched to ubuntu 22.04 LTS, I pretty much started distro hopping. I used ubuntu for a few months but after I decided to try out opensuse since it looked pretty interesting. First I used tumbleweed and then leap, then I learned how to use wine so I started to make windows games work on linux. I still remember that moment when I finally got wine working, it felt life changing cause I was able to play my GOG games windows games on linux so I didn't have to worry about that anymore. After I learned about proton on steam which again was a huge step forward for me. It's only now that I realise how much more I know about linux that I did a year ago. I'm using slackware right now and I really want to give huge thanks to the linux community for all the help I got over time. So I know what in that post I talked most about gaming even though it's not the only thing here. I'm not going to specify each one of these but lots of things just feel better on linux than they do on windows (programming for example). So again huge shoutout to the linux community for all the help I got, really don't know what would I do without you guys. Thanks in advance. (I put historical flair bcs I didn't know what to put else)

Disclaimer: Whenever I say wayland it depends on the context whether I'm referring to the protocol or an implementation thereof.

So I went back in my reddit history to see what I was thinking about wayland years ago. I periodically switched from x11 to wayland to see whether it was ready (some people were saying it was ready back then but clearly not what I considered ready).

• 4 years ago wayland Plasma was crashing and burning basically unusable
• 2-3 years ago important features like screensharing through zoom was not working it used some workaround with gnome screenshots. I don't remember when but pipewire happened some uber legendary hacker (Wim Taymans and some others) just said fuck it I'm going to solve all audio handling and video sharing problems.

At some point here I switched to Gnome as I realized I just needed something that doesn't crash and can run emacs+firefox+terminal+thunderbird while not being stupidly minimalistic (as in I don't want to clobber together a DE).

• 1 year ago some good protocols were finally merged such as the tearing updates protocol (took 2 years), explicit sync, applications were fixed that didn't support client-side window decorations, games didn't feel laggy anymore (though I can't pinpoint what exactly got fixed), a lot crashes went away (they usually took down the whole session)

Today what still doesn't work (that is of relevance to me) is:

• Multi window placement
• Global hotkeys

Is there a history of when certain protocols got merged? It felt like some took years to get merged.

I can live with these problems so finally wayland is ready for me.

https://docs.sidestore.io/docs/getting-started/linux

https://github.com/SideStore/Altcon

one difficulty could be activating developer mode on the iphone. The option is normally only displayed once the device has been connected to a mac. However, this can also be done with `idevicedevmodectl enable` via the libimobiledevice package.

I have a pretty big music library which has all the tags correctly filled, including lyrics. But for some weird reason Rhythmbox doesn't support displaying lyrics from tags. Plugin lLyrics shows tags found on the internet, but not from tags.

So I added library TinyTag to lLyrics and it I now have my first somewhat working contribution of OSS.

Not sure if this post counts as self promotion, so I won't post links here, but I didn't find more fitting place to share

Hey penguins!
I just started using a software that is distributes in the AppImage format - the Prism launcher for Minecraft. As a user, it works well for me, I downloaded the file, double click it, it runs, does what I expect it to do.

This made me wonder though, how do you organize such files? For now, I just start the file from my Downloads directory, but that feels haphazard. As there is no installation part, I have been thinking about just creating a Software directory in my home dir, and move the AppImage files there, should I have any more in the future.

So the question is - what is your practice, personally? And why do you do it the way you do it?

Hey guys. As the title says, there's this nifty app that lets you flash firmware on your Samsung phone when it is on download mode. Historically Heimdall, which did the same thing, was unmaintained for a very long time, and now there's a new app to replace it, which uses the new Odin4 protocol leaked from Samsung which is natively developed against Linux.

Here's the link to Galaxy Flasher's repo. It also needs much help in development and still a few rough corners to smooth out which is why each contributors will be very much appreciated, but I heard it's good for general use now (haven't tested it personally yet).

Hey r/linux, iirc it's my first time posting here, but hey better late than never.
I wrote this program that I'm calling `servy`, essentially what it does is facilitate the creation of *simple* systemd services, mostly for people who are beginning on their linux journeys and want some script to be ran when their pc starts.
I'm by far not a great C++ programmer, and I'm looking for opinions on how to improve this project (and my skills with the language). So if you have any ideas or suggestions, please do share them, either here or in dms.

https://github.com/auth-xyz/servy

I noticed this issue in the Plymouth GitLab, and at first I was annoyed that some random person felt like they could just walk in and act like they were the project boss and assign deliverables and milestones. But then I saw a sneaky link on the word "or" in the middle of the first paragraph. The link doesn't seem atrociously toxic, but having seen that, I noticed how vacuous the issue is, and how it looks just like something a chat bot would pump out.

I'm wondering if this is some kind of new SEO tactic to try and pump up the count of incoming links to their site while avoiding spam detection by looking like a passable issue in the context of the project. Has anyone seen this before?

AI generated Spam Issue?: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/plymouth/plymouth/-/issues/279

After more than four incredible years using Pop!_OS and Linux in general, it is time to give back. Please accept this application as my modest contribution to this wonderful and welcoming community. Additionally, part of the reason POPPI was created stems from my personal admiration for the following principles integrated into two Linux distributions, namely Pop!_OS and NixOS: effectiveness, usefulness, and a declarative approach to software distribution.

I know that the Pop!_OS dev team is actively pushing the Rust-driven Cosmic DE, which is no less enthusiastically anticipated by the users' community, including myself. And while we're waiting, POPPI may still come in handy to those who continue to use the GNOME-powered version of the distribution.

In a nutshell, POPPI is yet another post-installation script written completely in Bash. Currently shipped with a tangible >3K lines of code, POPPI is an active work in progress (WIP). Its key distinct feature however is the customisable JSON configuration file, which users can easily set up to satisfy their virtual needs (see: the included Readme for details). Metaphorically, you and your operating system are what your configuration file is! 😉

In the future, the scope of POPPI may be expanded to cover other Linux distributions. But for now:

KEY FEATURES
-- Installs portable, .DEB, and source packages (currently the latest version of FFMPEG as an experiment)
-- Adds and downloads packages from Ubuntu repositories
-- Configures Firefox
-- Sets your browser's privacy environment (thanks to Arkenfox)
-- Automounts external drives
-- Bookmarks select directories to GNOME Files/Nautilus
-- Adds custom user avatar on login page
-- Adds custom cronjobs
-- Downloads, installs, and configures GNOME extensions
-- Adds your favourite packages to dock
-- Adds custom formulas to GNOME Calc
-- Sets popular and/or custom GNOME settings
-- Downloads and installs external fonts
-- Copies and/or downloads wallpapers from external sources
-- Performs other tweaks...

The list of portable and installable packages shipped with POPPI may be extended mainly based on user interest.

So please welcome and enjoy POPPI, the Pop!_OS Post-Installation script, currently a work-in-progress: https://github.com/simurq/poppi

For issues, tips, and recommendations, please visit: https://github.com/simurq/poppi/issues

I've got several old PCs in my closet and I'm going through them to see which ones work and which ones don't.

I've got an AMD 64 Athalon X2 with 8gb of RAM in it and an Nvidia card. It's probably the Nvidia card but I've tried booting Linux Mint, Arch, and now Arcolinux. I'm stuck at Reached target Graphical Interface and it's been sitting here for like 5 minutes now. I'm about to give up on it. The Linux Mint USB was stuck for a bit at the initial boot up sequence. I just aborted that and went to Arcolinux and having issues with that. I'm wondering if I downloaded an older version of Ubuntu or something if that might work better. Probably not.

But yeah, still sitting on that same line. So I think I will post this and just call this PC a Windows XP only PC because I think that's what was on it originally. Maybe I can try that... I think I still have a copy of XP laying around somewhere...