Distro: Linux Mint Cinnamon

I use a different Browser and hence uninstalled firefox. But it still receives updates through the system, same with thunderbird. My upgrade manager flags them as security updates sometimes, so I install them. But are they actually necessary? Can I make my system filter them out when updating, or is that a bad idea?

Solution: run dpkg -l "*firef*" to find there were still firefox packages installed. Removed them. Hopefully did the trick.

I'm using CachyOS (Arch) with BTRFS. And tried to restore snap of root subvolume and it didn't work ( see previous post ).

If I remember correctly, i successfully restored root subvolume before. Take it with a grain of salt.

Some people on my previos posts said that I shouldn't have tried restore root subvol while system is actively running through the subvol.

Now my question is,

How to restore a snap of root subvolume ?

Edit: I know how to restore a snapshot. Just need help with root subvol snapshot.

I use BTRFS Assistant with snapper. And rEFInd doens't have boot to snapshot option. (I installed and it didn't work )

Sometimes when I restart my computer ill click cachyos in refind and itll just keep restarting until eventually it boots when I click it, sometiems when I start my computer its in the cachyos bootflags editing screen? How do I reset my bootflags to whatever was default if I accidentally changed them. Once it eventually launches it runs fine, but I have to goto the lockscreen to shutdown.

Hello.. new Linux convert here, mostly been using the web interface (alexandrite) and Connect on my phone. But I'm wondering what's good on Linux. I'm on Arch btw, lol. :P thanks!

EDIT: ok, sounds like browser it is. Thanks all!

I know spice and virtio exists but the support for GPUs is a hit or miss and good luck trying to make it work on iGPU, without 3d support it's pretty slow even on basic desktop usage.

.

Context: I updated my CachyOS (Arch) BTRFS system. Some new things caused few problems especially brave browser(missing tabs), some icons missing.

So I wanted to go back to previous snapshot.

What I did: I first restored my home subvol which I saved before update. I worked.

Then I tried to restored my root partition. This is where I got the problem.

I got this error.

I would really appreciate URGENT help

If you need any more details I can provide.

EDIT

1. I used BTRFS Assistant to restore the root partition. And I did it while the OS is running.

( I previously did that and got no issues )

2. I pressed crtl+d and got 👇🏽

3. I typed my password and went into maintenance. Typed journalctl -xb and got 2667 lines 😵‍💫. While scrolling mindlessly, this looked like something 👇🏽

👉🏽

👉🏽

4. This is my refind_linux.conf 👇🏽

"Boot with standard options"    "quiet zswap.enabled=0 nowatchdog splash rw rootflags=subvol=/@ cryptdevice=UUID=60ecb22d-7685-43c2-ae2a-a2ad0c531cc7:luks-60ecb22d-7685-43c2-ae2a-a2ad0c531cc7 root=/dev/mapper/luks-60ecb22d-7685-43c2-ae2a-a2ad0c531cc7"

"Boot to single-user mode"    "quiet zswap.enabled=0 nowatchdog splash rw rootflags=subvol=/@ cryptdevice=UUID=60ecb22d-7685-43c2-ae2a-a2ad0c531cc7:luks-60ecb22d-7685-43c2-ae2a-a2ad0c531cc7 root=/dev/mapper/luks-60ecb22d-7685-43c2-ae2a-a2ad0c531cc7" single

"Boot with minimal options"   "ro root=/dev/mapper/luks-60ecb22d-7685-43c2-ae2a-a2ad0c531cc7"

5. This my OS partition 👇🏽

6. This is my subvol layout 👇🏽 (CachyOS default)

I updated arch. After the update mangohud is not showing any GPU stats except GPU model.

I was working perfectly fine before.

Config 👇🏽

################### File Generated by Goverlay ###################
legacy_layout=false


background_alpha=0.6
round_corners=10
background_alpha=0.6
background_color=000000

font_size=24
text_color=FFFFFF
position=top-left
toggle_hud=Shift_R+F12
no_display
pci_dev=0:0000:00
table_columns=4
gpu_text=GPU
gpu_stats
gpu_load_change
gpu_load_value=50,90
gpu_load_color=FFFFFF,FFAA7F,CC0000
gpu_temp
gpu_power
gpu_color=2E9762
cpu_text=CPU
cpu_stats

cpu_load_change
cpu_load_value=50,90
cpu_load_color=FFFFFF,FFAA7F,CC0000
cpu_temp
cpu_power
cpu_color=2E97CB
vram
vram_color=AD64C1
ram
ram_color=C26693
procmem
fps
fps_metrics=avg,0.01
gpu_name
frame_timing
frametime_color=00FF00
fps_limit_method=early
toggle_fps_limit=Shift_L+F1
show_fps_limit

fps_limit=144,90,60,45,30
fps_color_change
fps_color=B22222,FDFD09,39F900
fps_value=30,60
#offset=0







output_folder=/home/user
log_duration=30
autostart_log=0
log_interval=100
toggle_logging=Shift_L+F2

What it says on the tin. Power management is set to turn my monitors off after a set amount of time. They all instantly come back on. I have resorted to using a screen saver in X11 until this is solved.

Three monitors, different brands: one hdmi->hdmi, one dp->hdmi, dp->dvi (pc->monitor)

Only one of the monitors have input auto-switching and that is disabled.

I am losing my mind even the cli xset dpms force off (X11) or kscreen-doctor --dpms off (Wayland) just has them come back on seconds later.

All the A/V cables are new.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

The tmp file doesn't exist after i clicked cancel

cross-posted from: https://feddit.nl/post/29272050

Hi there.

Since I'm using Windows10 on decade-old hardware (can't upgrade to Windows11 even if I wanted to) I've decided to check out what Linux is all about. After a couple of flowcharts wanted to try out Mint. Bought a fresh USBstick, downloaded the ISO, flashed it with Balena Etcher, created a separate partition on a HDD in the case I decide to fully install it.

Trying to boot I get the options to select any bootable media, but choosing either UEFI or the other option to boot from the USB drive I get to a menu where I can select to boot to Live or in compatibility mode (among others), but whatever I choose I end up with rolling errormessages, main one being /init: line 38: can't open /dev/sr0: No medium found Googling around I've tried unplugging the USB and using it in another port, enabling/disabling stuff in the bios (but I have no idea where to start or what stuff actually does) but nothing really works.

After some time (10+ minutes) of rolling errors I get the prompt to boot from URL (or something), haven't tried that yet as I don't know if the network is even enabled...

So I have the next questions: Where do I begin with troubleshooting? Is there a way to interrupt the stream of errors it keeps spitting out for more than 10 minutes? Once the errors stop I seem to be in a full screen terminal with an unsuccessful boot, can I try to get it to boot from there?

Update: Ventoy seems to be more promising, it's got a nice menu and I can choose which bistro to load, but currently it's loading Mint quite a long time...

I suspect it's loading everything it can at once, but at least I can see the Mint logo for longer than 10 seconds in a splash screen.

But 15 minutes later it seems to be still loading...

Will update when I can

Update 2: YES! It got past the boot errors by unplugging the USB and plugging it back in. 

Life is calling, so it'll take a while before I can start figuring out why my mouse isn't working (or how I can install without a mouse), but at least I can confirm that Linux works on my PC.

Recently bought a RX7600XT and experienced lagging in Krita and flickering in blender since. I installed the drivers from AMD's website, and ROCm.

I am unsure and totally overwhelmed as to what could cause these issues. ~~ChatGPT always wants me to edit /etc/default/grub, but I am not sure why and what the bootloader has got to do with it?~~

These are quite a lot of questions and few information. If you need anything I am more than happy to provide any information.

So, I have an old desktop (Lenovo Erazer X310) that has been gathering dust for a while now. It runs Windows 10, and since I know support will be ending this year, I've decided to switch Linux and see if I can get some more use out of it. After doing a bit of research, I think that, as a complete noob, Mint is the right choice for me. After watching a few tutorials, I think I have a good understanding of how to install and set up Linux, but I have a couple of questions before I take the plunge. If anyone has a few minutes to answer them, I'd be very grateful.

1. I think Cinnamon is the version of Mint I should start with, but I've read that it might be better to go with MATE or Xfce for older machines. My Desktop is almost 11 years old now, but based on what I've read, I think it should still be able to comfortably run Cinnamon; 8 GB RAM, AMD A8-7600 Radeon r7 processor (4 cores, 3.1 GHz), and I'm 90% sure it has an SSHD. Is that good enough for Cinnamon?

2. Would those specs be good enough if I wanted to dual boot? I actually don't hate Windows 10 (it's certainly better than 11), and I'd like to keep it as an option for at least for the last few months it has support. I just reset Windows 10 and wiped all my files, and it's now running fairly quickly. Do you think it's capable of dual booting?

3. This may be a dumb question, but I can't actually find the answer anywhere; if I decide that I want to remove Windows 10 later, how difficult will that be? It's seems pretty easy to just delete it when I set up Linux, but will it be a hassle to remove once I've got Mint up and running?

Those are my big questions. I think I have a pretty good understand of how to install Linux from the BIOS, but I haven't actually installed an operating system since Windows 98 (and my dad helped me with that), so if anyone has any additional tips they think I should know I would welcome them. Thanks!

Edit: Thanks for the replies! It sounds like I should be able to run Cinnamon with no problem, but I'll probably test Cinnamon and MATE from a USB first and see which I like better. I really appreciate the advice!

I’ve recently installed EndeavourOS, and so far, so good. Got an OK setup and managing the basics.

Previously everything I’ve tried has been Debian based.

I know about the Arch Wiki… but was wondering if anyone recommended a relatively concise and easy-to-navigate resource to get a more rounded and complete understanding of Arch terminal commands?

I find it far more easy to learn when I understand where the terms come from - knowing that sudo means “superuser do”, pacman comes from package manager. But the moment I don’t know what yay, -s etc actually mean haha…

Thanks!

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I am using CachyOS (Arch btw) and when I tried to update using paru, it says some packages are in conflict, and asking to remove those. What should I do ?

I didn't find the best help from searching by myself ?

❯ paru
:: Synchronizing package databases...
 cachyos-v3 is up to date
 cachyos-core-v3 is up to date
 cachyos-extra-v3                                                                      2.5 MiB   484 KiB/s 00:05 [--------------------------------------------------------------------] 100%
 cachyos is up to date
 core is up to date
 extra is up to date
 multilib is up to date
:: Starting full system upgrade...
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...
:: wine-cachyos-2:9.0.20250126-2 and wine-mono-9.4.0-1 are in conflict. Remove wine-mono? [y/N] n
error: unresolvable package conflicts detected
error: failed to prepare transaction (conflicting dependencies)
:: wine-cachyos-2:9.0.20250126-2 and wine-mono-9.4.0-1 are in conflict

~ 17s

Hey there, I could use a little help.
I'm running Kubuntu 24.10 (the non-LTS variant) and after some system updates through KDE's Discovery, I'm unable to boot.

First off, some specs:
Kernel: 6.11.0-14-generic
GPU: GTX 1080 w/ proprietary drivers, version ~~560~~ 550 stable

I was first greeted with these lines:
[ TIME ] Timed out waiting for device dev-disk-by/x2duuid-[...].device
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for mnt-games.mount

This is not the first time this happened, so I went into recovery mode, opened /etc/fstab to comment out the device-specific line, saved, and rebooted.

The error disappeared, however the system still won't boot and I'm left with these entries visible on screen (abbreviated for clarity):

[ OK ] Started cups.service
[ OK ] Reached target printer.target
[ OK ] Started ipp-usb.service
[ OK ] Finished NetworkManager-wait-online.service
[ OK ] Reached target network-online.target
[ OK ] Started update-notifier-download.timer
[ OK ] Started update-notifier.motd.timer
[ OK ] Reached target timers.target
[ OK ] Started cups-browsed.service
Starting kerneloops.service
[ OK ] Started kerneloops.service
[ OK ] Reached target multi-user.target\
Starting power-profiles-daemon.service
[ OK ] Started power-profiles-daemon.service
[ OK ] Reached target graphical.target
Starting systemd-update-utmp-runlevel.service
[ OK ] Finished Starting systemd-update-utmp-runlevel.service

...and then nothing.

~~I need to leave, I'll fix the formatting and provide further information as soon as I'm back at my desk.~~

I've installed Samba on my Debian 12 home server but can't get it to start. I ran:

sudo systemctl start smbd
sudo systemctl status smbd

Here is the output:

   Duration: 7h 25min 18.079s
  Condition: start condition failed at Fri 2025-02-14 17:13:11 EST; 14min ago
       Docs: man:smbd(8)
             man:samba(7)
             man:smb.conf(5)
    Process: 598599 ExecCondition=/usr/share/samba/is-configured smb (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
        CPU: 1ms
Feb 14 17:13:11 harvee systemd[1]: Starting smbd.service - Samba SMB Daemon...
Feb 14 17:13:11 harvee systemd[1]: smbd.service: Skipped due to 'exec-condition'.
Feb 14 17:13:11 harvee systemd[1]: Condition check resulted in smbd.service - Samba SMB Daemon being skipped.

The install also doesn't seem to have created a samba configuration directory in /etc or a log in /var/log

I'm stumped. Googling turns up a lot of people accidentally checking the status of 'samba' instead of 'smbd', but I'm not finding much on this issue. What am I doing wrong?

Hey all, I have a bit of a weird issue I’ve been struggling to fix for a little while now and am hoping a kind soul here might have the knowledge to help me figure it out.

A couple of years ago i switched from a single-system-dual-display setup to dual-system-single-display (as in one screen per system). I’ll spare the long winded explanation for it, but the gist of it is that the new system (a Mac Mini) is connected to the original, main system (custom built PC) via the motherboard’s audio jack so I can get the audio from both systems to play on the same speakers. That way the main PC focuses on the game or whatever else i’m doing, while the Mac Mini focuses on tools/streams/movies/etc. and both share the same set of speakers.

So it goes: Mac Mini (audio out) > (line in) Main PC (audio out) > Speakers

The way I had it work on Windows was by simply going to the audio settings, going to the Line In item’s properties, and checking the “listen to this device” box.

On Linux (Arch, KDE 6 if that helps at all), it was as simple as running either pactl load-module module-loopback or pw-loopback and it would work the same way as Windows out of the box.

Problem is, my motherboard (Asus TUF Gaming X570-Pro (Wi-Fi)) in the main PC died recently, so I had to get a new one (Asus ROG STRIX X870-F Gaming Wifi), and ever since, I’ve been unable to get audio loopback to work even after a clean, fresh install. Listening to device on Windows works fine still but I’m looking to completely get rid of Windows.

By default, running pw-loopback with no tinkering (which worked on the previous build) cut the audio from the main PC and replaced it by what sounds like slow steps in a very echo-y cave.

With a bit of tinkering trying to follow online guides and documentations which i’ve since undone (but the changes remained somehow) it changed to just duplicating the main PC audio with a tiny bit of delay (or at least the audio from one app on the main PC).

One thing I’ve noticed is that when I boot up my main PC, a couple of errors do show up:

Hub 10-0:1.0: config failed, hub doesn’t have any ports! (err -19)
hid-generic 0003:1532:0292.0008: No inputs registered, leaving
Bluetooth: hci0: Opcode 0x0c03 failed: -16

While seemingly unrelated to my loopback issue (hid error being my keyboard), looking those up made me realize that the motherboard IS fairly new and therefore driver support might be lacking (specifically the Bluetooth error, which I don’t care much about in all honesty), which might potentially be the root cause of loopback not working as expected.

Here are the results of some commands I see are asked about often when troubleshooting the same problem: ‘lspci | grep -i audio’

01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GA104 High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)
73:00.1 Audio Device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Rembrandt Radeon High Definition Audio Controller

Neither seems to be the motherboard (the first one being my 3060 Ti which I don’t pull audio from, the second looking like the CPU’s (AMD Ryzen 7 9700X) iGPU.

‘journalctl -p err’, or simply ‘journalctl’ don’t return anything relating to audio (essentially only returns the same keyboard and bluetooth errors mentioned above).

‘pactl info’ does return something interesting which might be the cause of the issue:

Server String: /run/user/1000/pulse/native
Library Protocol Version: 35
Server Protocol Version: 35
Is Local: yes
Client Index: 128
Tile Size: 65472
User Name: thelvadam
Host Name: CoreDynamics
Server Name: PulseAudio (on PipeWire 1.2.7)
Server Version: 15.0.0
Default Sample Specification: float32le 2ch 48000Hz
Default Channel Map: front-left, front-right
Default Sink: alsa_output.usb-Generic_USB_Audio-00.analog-stereo
Default Source: alsa_input.usb-Generic_USB_Audio-00.analog-stereo
Cookie: 6a69:7312

The weird thing is that the Sink and Source are labeled as usb-Generic_USB_Audio despite being the audio jack ports on the back of the motherboard. Maybe I’m just dumb. The motherboard BIOS settings do have an option for “USB Audio Controller” which is enabled by default under Advanced > Onboard Devices Configuration, but disabling it completely disables any and all audio devices.

I also tried using alsamixer to see if anything was disabled. I found a “Microhone” and “Line In” that were disabled, enabled them, but no change.

Does anyone have any idea why I can’t get audio loopback to work again? I’ll gladly provide more system info if I didn’t provide enough.

Thanks in advance!

I have a friend who I recently learned is looking to switch to Linux and I offered to help, since I've been using Linux for ages. I'm not the most technical user, but in some ways I think that makes me uniquely well suited to be a new person's guide, and I'm pretty familiar with the install and setup process sans one big thing, proprietary graphics drivers, I've generally always been installing Linux on a laptop it an integrated gpu

They let me know they have an nvidia graphics card, I think 30 series if I remember right, we don't know what DE or distro might be a good fit for them and I told them we'd start by test driving a few, see what they thought of the interfaces, and pick a distro from there

Can you boot and use the OS without installing the proprietary drivers, or do you need to install them via like tty or something? I know nvidia started open sourcing their drivers and some amount is in the kernel now, I assume proprietary drivers are still optimal, if not explicitly necessary?

Any and all advice is welcome, it's kinda hard to research something this general and get a sense for what the big picture looks like

Thank you!

I just installed a Debian 13 Trixie system on my laptop. I have 5 GPT partitions on 1 terabyte SSD and NO LVM!

sda1 vfat 256M   EFI system partition
sda2 ext4 512M   boot partition
sda3 LUKS 460G   encrypted root
--   sda3_crypt  root partition, unlocks with passphrase
sda4 LUKS 465G   encrypted home
--   sda4_crypt  home partition, unlocks with passphrase
sda5 LUKS 4G     encrypted swap
--   sda5_crypt  swap partition, unlocks with keyfile

GRUB works fine, it loads the kernel, then I enter the password to decrypt my root partition. It decrypts correctly, then hangs for 1 minute 30 seconds.

After that, I get this error:

[ TIME ] Timed out waiting for device dev-mapper-sda4_crypt.device - /dev/mapper/sda4_crypt.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for home.mount - /home/
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for local-fs.target - Local File Systems.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for systemd-fsck@dev-mapper-sda4_crypt.service - File System Check on /dev/mapper/sda4_crypt.
[ TIME ] Timed out waiting for device dev-mapper-sda5_crypt.device - /dev/mapper/sda5_crypt.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for dev-mapper-sda5_crypt.swap - /dev/mapper/sda5_crypt.
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for swap.target - Swaps

Not once does it ask me for the password to decrypt my home partition, it just waits until it fails.

When I use the Timeshift GUI to create a snapshot, it takes a very long time to complete. If I click Cancel, my desktop environment crashes and I get kicked to a black screen or a login prompt.

When I use Timeshift CLI, it creates the snapshot in less than a second, but the command waits for a long time afterward. However, it can be safely interrupted with control-C.

Timeshift is in BTRFS mode.

Using system disk as snapshot device for creating snapshots in BTRFS mode
Mounted '/dev/dm-0 (sda3)' at '/run/timeshift/33685/backup'
btrfs: Quotas are not enabled
Creating new backup...(BTRFS)
Saving to device: /dev/dm-0, mounted at path: /run/timeshift/33685/backup
Created directory: /run/timeshift/33685/backup/timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2025-01-29_15-21-49
Created subvolume snapshot: /run/timeshift/33685/backup/timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2025-01-29_15-21-49/@
Created control file: /run/timeshift/33685/backup/timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2025-01-29_15-21-49/info.json
BTRFS Snapshot saved successfully (0s)
^C

#output of time command
real    0m1.165s
user    0m0.004s
sys     0m0.009s

[Warning] Deleted invalid lock
Using system disk as snapshot device for creating snapshots in BTRFS mode
Mounted '/dev/dm-0 (sda3)' at '/run/timeshift/32947/backup'
btrfs: Quotas are not enabled
Creating new backup...(BTRFS)
Saving to device: /dev/dm-0, mounted at path: /run/timeshift/32947/backup
Created directory: /run/timeshift/32947/backup/timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2025-01-29_15-13-13
Created subvolume snapshot: /run/timeshift/32947/backup/timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2025-01-29_15-13-13/@
Created control file: /run/timeshift/32947/backup/timeshift-btrfs/snapshots/2025-01-29_15-13-13/info.json
BTRFS Snapshot saved successfully (0s)
Tagged snapshot '2025-01-29_15-13-13': ondemand
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Maximum backups exceeded for backup level 'weekly'

#output of time command
real    1m12.419s
user    0m0.001s
sys     0m0.009s

Possibly related to this bug?

So, i have been a Linux only user for about a year now I think. I went with bazzite, and am quite happy so far, i haven't yet managed to brick anything and almost everything I want to do is easily done.

However, there is the keyring app that gives me nothing but grief. Supposedly it stores login credentials for applications on the system. Practically, it does whatever the fuck it wants, and I have no idea why.

Randomly, on every system boot, it asks me to create a new keyring. Doesn't access already stored info, doesn't store afterwards entered credentials properly either. Ultimately it doesn't work for me at all.

...or so you would think. Sometimes, for no discernible reason, it works as expected. No keyring creation prompt, no manual typing of my vpn credentials. It has them stored, reads them properly, and connects the vpn automatically and quietly in the background just as I set it up and want to behave.

But anytime I get used to it just working as expected it goes back to a period of constant password typing and dozens upon dozens of (empty) duplicate entries in its credential list.

What the fuck is going on with that damn app, and how do I fix it?

Thanks in advance

Hi, I've been fiddling with PopOS the past year on an old laptop and I like it. I'm getting ready to convert my windows 10 desktop to Pop and leave windows behind entirely, before I do I want to be sure I understand a few security concepts.

I've read suggestions that say don't run as root, create a separate user account and only use root when necessary. Do you give that user account sudo privileges? If so, is that any different from just being root?

Also I've installed the ufw firewall but left it with default settings. Is that something I need to look into more?

Thanks in advance!

I often want to read output from the terminal from the beginning but by default I have to scroll back up. This can be laborious when there is a lot of text. Is there anything I can do about this?

Thanks :)