I'm looking for a black & white laser printer with a scanner for home office use. The only fancy thing about it is that I'm running Linux and I don't want to install any driver packages from the manufacturer. I want to plug it into any laptop running any Linux distro and start printing and scanning with no fuss.

Brother printers are very popular, but if I search for any Brother printer and "linux", all I can find is stuff about the drivers and how to fix the various issues that come with those.

If I understand correctly, modern printers should just work via something called IPP/AirPrint and they should also work over USB. Is that correct?

What about the scanner? Does that also just work over IPP?

I've been running Linux full-time pretty much since Valve released Proton. I remember submitting reports to ProtonDB back when it was just a shared Google Sheet! In the years that followed I made it a point to test and report out on different games as new versions of Proton were released and support improved. I thought it important that we have a good data set for what worked and what didn't. Over those years I tested hundreds of games and submitted as many reports to the database.

In thinking back over my gaming in 2023, however, I realized that I fell out of the habit of submitting reports because I'm so used to Proton working that it's stopped occurring to me that it might not.

That doesn't mean that there aren't some games that don't work -- it simply means that the success rate that I used to have (maybe 30-50% on average) has risen high enough that I'm genuinely surprised if something doesn't work (it's probably somewhere around 95% for me now, though that's biased by the types of games that I play). I actually tried to remember the last game that didn't work, and I genuinely couldn't tell you what it was. Everything I've played recently has booted like it's native.

Honestly, I genuinely don't even know which games are native and which run through Proton anymore. I've stopped caring!

I got my Steam Deck halfway through 2022. It was awesome, but it was definitely a bit rough around the edges. There weren't that many compatible games. The OS had some clunkiness. It matured though, and has gotten better. Among my friend group, I'm the only person who cares even a little bit about Linux. If you asked any of them to name three different Linux distributions they'd stare at you blankly because they wouldn't understand the question. Nevertheless, of my friends, SIX of them have Steam Decks and are now gaming regularly on Linux.

There are currently ~4,300 Deck Verified games and ~8,700 Deck Playable games according to Valve. On ProtonDB, ~8,600 games have been verified as working on Linux by at least three users, while ~19,700 games have been verified by at least one user. There is SO much variety available, and the speed with which we've gotten here has been pretty breathtaking.

This was my device breakdown for my Steam Replay for 2023:

• 55% Steam Deck
• 32% Linux
• 10% Virtual Reality
• 4% Windows

The only non-Linux gaming I did was VR and some local multiplayer stuff I have on a Windows machine hooked up to my TV.

I don't want to proselytize too much, but if you have a general interest in gaming, you could probably switch over to Linux full time and be perfectly happy with the variety of games you have available to you. Not too long ago, making the jump felt like a huge sacrifice because you'd be giving up so much -- SO many games were incompatible -- but it no longer feels that way. You can transfer and most of -- probably almost all -- your library will still work! Also, if a particular game doesn't work, there isn't too much sting because, well, there are thousands of others you can give your attention to.

If you have a specific game that you must play, then it's possibly a different story. If you love Destiny 2, for example, then full-time Linux definitely is not for you. The same goes VR -- it's simply not up to snuff on Linux yet. There are other niches too that don't transfer over as well (modding, racing sims, etc.) so, of course, this isn't a blanket recommendation and everyone's situation is different.

But for a prototypical person who's just your sort of general, everyday gamer? It's reached a point where they could be very happy on Linux. In fact, as proven by my friends and their Steam Decks, it's reached a point where people can be gaming on Linux and not even know they're doing that. That's how frictionless it's gotten!

I don't really have a point to this post other than to say it's incredible that we are where we are, and I'm beyond appreciative of all the effort that people have put in to making this possible.

Two hours ago I randomly thought "hey, why not do LFS?", so I opened my laptop and started following the book. I've heard a lot of people say that LFS is great for learning how a Linux system works. However, so far it's just been a guide on how to compile different software and what autoconfig flags to use. I thought that maybe further chapters will have more information on how things work, but it seems like they all just contain a one-line description of a program and compilation instructions.

If anyone here has done LFS, did you actually learn anything from it? Is it worth spending more time on?

So as the title states, I am realizing that most folks don't have CD readers. I do, and I can burn my phone's videos to one, but... I also use Linux these days. I have a CD burner somewhere around here, but honestly I just want to do a "zip file" type option, where I can just group the videos and get them on a usb stick to send out.

Everything I find on the 'net is about burning CDs and whatnot... which isn't my goal. Honestly, I think windows did this just easy-peasy with select and "burn to image" or whatnot. But I dunno how with Linux (Arch/i3).

Edit: I'm asking because I don't see any options in pacman. It may be in yay, but it's my bedtime...
Edit 2: Lots of folks asking why I want an ISO and not just copy the files; my dad states their TV will play videos 'in a DVD format from a USB stick' (and I don't know how accurate it is, but it's what was requested).

Hi

I figured before I start venturing into other forums dedicated to this sort of thing, I'd ask here on Tildes since I'm at least comfortable with the community and how helpful they can be here.

I'm tired of all of the subscription services I have, movies and TV shows disappearing from them, buying a film on Prime and only being able to watch it offline through a specific app. Even then, half the time we're watching comfort TV shows that we have on DVD already (X-Files and Friends for instance).

So I figured that building a home media server would give me the chance to cut the cord with a couple of these services and allow us to start using and controlling our own data again.

I have a budget of around £300 (I could perhaps push to £400 if needed) and I'm honestly not sure at all where to start. I have knowledge on how to build brand new, medium to high end gaming PCs as I've done it since I was in my late teens and built my first PC with the wages from my very first job but building a budget minded PC for use as a home media server goes completely over my head.

I've noticed that a lot of the pre-built NAS or media server boxes are very expensive so my first thought was to buy a refurbed workstation or small form factor PC that has enough "oomph" to do the trick but I don't know what ones to even start looking at and then I start to feel a little bit out of my comfort zone.

Things like getting the right CPU in these refurbed machines that offers the features I'm looking for like hardware transcoding etc., integrated GPU's, ensuring there's enough SATA ports for multiple hard drives and an SSD for a boot drive, and then to top it all off ensuring that while achieving these features the thing shouldn't draw too much power when idling as it'll be on for long stretches of time, if not left on 24/7.

I've also got no knowledge of Linux, I've never even looked at it but if it's genuinely easy enough (for someone with next to no Linux experience) then I'd be happy to give it a shot if it offers better performance compared to using Windows 10 or something.

All the server will be used for is watching TV shows, perhaps the odd film, listening to a bit of music perhaps and the odd podcast now and again. Simultaneous streaming will be fairly minimal, perhaps 2 streams as me or my partner watch one thing and our daughter watches another on her tablet. In regards to streaming outside the house that will also be almost non-existent, perhaps, again our daughter watching a kids TV show like Pokemon or Fireman Sam on her tablet when we're out but me and my partner don't tend to watch anything when we're outside the house, certainly not TV shows or movies anyway.

Redundancy isn't something I'm too horrendously worried about, I wouldn't be storing anything like photos that we wouldn't want to lose on it and while it'd be annoying, losing a drive with TV shows or films on it wouldn't be the end of the world.

Any help would be massively appreciated, thanks.

Hi all,

I’m looking for advice re making a full snapshot/backup of a running Linux system (Debian).

In an ideal world, should an issue occur, I would like to be able to load a live USB with the backup, boot and write from that.

Timeshift seems to be an option but I’m wondering how the above would work in my case. A few questions.

1. My disk is fully encrypted with LUKS. Would this pose a problem?
2. I would like to write my backups to a veracrypt container. Would this pose any issue? I’m not sure how I would boot from a live USB in this case I could not decrypt the USB.

Essentially I’d like a step-by-step guide to backing up my full system (including all files in home) in such a way that I can easily roll back should the worst happen. Do any of you know of such a guide or can perhaps offer some help?

I was stubbornly determined to get my new Yubikeys working for FIDO2 SSH on WSL, which led me down the road to compiling my own custom Linux kernel for WSL with HIDDEV and HIDRAW enabled.

This was my first time ever trying anything like this, and by the end of it I realized that it's not actually so scary to compile your own custom Linux kernel!

Have you ever compiled a custom kernel before? What was the sequence of events that led you to do it?

I want to finally try NixOS and build a desktop OS from the ground up with sway, iwd, waybar, foot terminal, cmus, etc.

I'm not a developer, but I'm a seasoned Linux user. Used Gentoo for years, Void Linux and now I'm on OpenSUSE TW.

I'm finding all sorts of guides and it seems confusing. In the past there wasn't any mention of home-manager and flakes, now it seems there are these things. Those are all things I need to care about? Is it all configured in one file?

I want to upgrade my gaming setup, but I want to move towards a desktop replacement laptop for the compact form factor to free up desk space or even get rid of a desk altogether. I also want to try out Pop!_OS since I know it has good Nvidia drivers and that most games are compatible with Linux nowadays.

Has anyone had any experience with switching to Pop!_OS from Windows? What is software compatibility like? Pros and cons?

Also is anyone here using an 18 inch gaming laptop? I'm interested in huge laptops since I'm not really planning on taking it on the go.

I know the basics commands, command substitution, redirection, pipelines, and I know about .bashrc, .vimrc etc. but I feel like I still don't know a lot and I feel a bit lost as to where to learn more. I know I'm being a bit vague, but that's on purpose, I don't really know what's possible. feel free to suggest any book or resource that you think would help me learn more about linux (I also haven't been keeping up with it lately, so any new stuff like what's NixOS would help)

So I have an old MacBook Pro (mid-2014) Core i5 which I've just installed Ubuntu 22.04.2 on. Most things are working fine but the screen randomly flickers and then goes black and then after varying lengths of time will pop back on again. I've been googling around and found lots of instances of similar graphics glitches but can't quite find a solution.

Any suggestions?

Where do you find volunteers to help with open source projects? Such as:

• https://www.codeshelter.co
• https://hacktoberfest.com
• https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com

For example, with KeenWrite, I'm looking for help help with a specific feature that could be applicable to a wide audience (i.e., academia and technical writers). The lion's share of the effort for cross-references would be an extension or change to the flexmark-java library: parsing a de facto standard cross-reference syntax, rather than direct changes to my text editor.

I've been experimenting with Ubuntu and Mint on VirtualBox for a few days, and I fail to see the utility for less tech savvy people such as myself. I have experience in HTML and CSS as well as dabbling in Codecademy for recreation, but higher level computing is new to me. I don't know how to navigate a terminal nor how to stop Windows from crashing, but I'm open to learn.

I had to use the Arch Linux live boot usb today and I was pleasantly surprised to hear a short beepy music play when it got booted. It felt quite welcoming!

In my particular case, it served quite useful too as my laptop currently does not have an internal display, and nothing shows up on the external HDMI monitor until after the OS boots up, so it was quite reassuring as well.

I have now configured my GRUB to play a small sound as well (since I have multiple bootloaders installed).

How To

1. You need to edit the config file /etc/default/grub.
2. If you simply un-comment the line starting with GRUB_INIT_TUNE, it will enable the default tune which is a single and very short "beep" sound.
3. Or, you can edit that line to have it how you want. Some suggestions: https://jdnash.com/api-makers/grub_init_tune-necropolis/
4. Then update the grub config (requires root): grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

And you're done.

Relevant Arch Wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB/Tips_and_tricks#Play_a_tune

Hey y’all. Recently picked up a Cyberpower prebuilt. Looking to install a Linux distro on it for gaming. Currently have Ubuntu on my laptop, so I’m not a total noob, but my experience is still low. Not a big fan of having to use the terminal. Any distros y’all would recommend? Am leaning toward Pop_OS or SteamOS.

So, I'm using Arch i3wm. I have multiple copies of my /home/username (I am the sole user), and I have a "Spare" drive with media, games, and other goodies, some of which are also stored on partitions on the m.2 in question, but they have backups.

And the reason I ask this question is because while I've had my m.2 fail at the end of '21 (I didn't even know that was a thing, but it barely lasted a year, and things are acting shoddy now... though the original failed without a warning), I just bought a second m.2 for my games. I guess I could swap most of the whole thing over, but I know the boot partition is easier just rebuilt from scratch... which I had to do last week.

Ultimately, what's making me suspicious is when I upgraded to the new drive and unplugged all my non-m.2 satas, I also added some memory and a new power supply. But then after the upgrade (Monday of last week, so the 5th), the system wouldn't boot up. I used a usb to troubleshoot and my /boot partition was apparently no gouda. I redid that, and everything was fine... until this week. Then my new Games partition (basically the new drive) failed fsck and it got stuck in a boot loop on Tuesday. I could boot emergency to root, but not skip the fsck and keep the Games disk auto mounted (I know I changed something to randomize fsck on bootup, but that's something I'm still kinda looking into how I managed...), so I just removed it from my fstab and it booted fine. For two times. I just manually mounted the drive, all was great, then my SO sent me a screenshot today while I was at work stating that my / partition (on the older m.2) apparently rebooted because it bypassed my screen lock, and was stating EXT4-fs error, reading directory lblock:0 and whatnot.

So, that's my history on what's going on, and if anyone can offer any advice [mostly] on the backup stuff, though as I said, /home and the important tangible stuff is saved, but if you also have any input on something more than I suspect the drive is failing (since the /boot partition and now the / partition are crapping out), please feel free to share.

(Also, thanks for letting me in. This is what I'd typically post on reddit and probably have to repost 10 times depending on the sub to get the right keywords and tags and yes, I already searched the internet but my search will not match yours... sigh)

Hey,

I use Windows 10 and Arch in a dual boot configuration.

I use both of them for software development and want a shared partition to store all the projects.
Unfortunately, it's not as easy as I had thought.

Initially, I tried NTFS as the Linux support seemed fine. I tried both, ntfs-3g and the kernel implementation.
Besides the issue that hibernate could lock the drive - which you can disable - it periodically caused problems during compilation and other stages.

Especially Rust based projects have thrown weird errors during builds, but I also had this on certain Go projects as well.
It sometimes felt like, that the NTFS driver returned the wrong files when the compiler asked for them. Unmet dependencies, missing files, etc. Usually, when the project is huge.

In certain scenarios symbolic links didn't work and permissions were not set correctly - which you can fix by adding some args to the fstab mount - never got it really stable though.

I then tried to format to Ext4, and all issues were instantly gone on the Linux side.

Fortunately, there are tools such as Linux FileSystem from Paragon which promise to make it work (I even bought a proper license) - and it did for a while, until it didn't.

I once copied a bigger folder that included a bigger node_modules folder and during copy, files were missing, corrupted, the copy process hung - then crashed.

I was so desperate that I even tried out FAT32, but I quickly found out that it doesn't support symbolic links at all, and therefore breaks Git and other tools depending on it.

Is it still so hard in 2023 to have a shared partition between two OS? Has anyone made better experiences?
I really don't want to split the partitions as I sometimes work on the same project on different OSes.

Thanks in advance!