I recently implemented a backup workflow for me. I heavily use restic for desktop backup and for a full system backup of my local server. It works amazingly good. I always have a versioned backup without a lot of redundant data. It is fast, encrypted and compressed.

But I wondered, how do you guys do your backups? What software do you use? How often do you do them and what workflow do you use for it?

Any distro would do, but for my case, it is Arch because I have more control over the partitions. I would like the OS, so root, swap and others on 1 drive. The /home should be on a separate drive. The tricky thing is to have everything encrypted, except /boot and /efi of course.

Now, here is what I can do

1. FDE on 1 drive. This is easy: you create /efi, /boot and then create a large LUKS partition. From there, you create LVM on that LUKS partition and get your: /, /home and swap. Then mount everything correctly and install.

In the grub config, you only need to set it so it knows the LUKS partitom and where the root is. For eg, if your LUKs partition is /dev/sda3, you do:

• cryptdevice=UUID=<uuid of the /dev/sda3>: cryptlvm rootfs=/dev/vg/root.

2. Unencrypted /home on another drive. This is like 1) but /home is mounted on a separate drive. Still need to do the grub config, but nothing is needed for /home. It is automatically mounted when you login.

Now for my case: Encrypt /home

The encryption and mount part is easy. But how to get the OS to recognize it? The Arch wiki has this weird thing where you create an encryption key, they called it home.key, using cryptsetup. You then store the key in /etc and then in your /etc/crypttab, you specifiy the drive with /home and location of the key. No need for any passphrase.

The problem I have with this is that keys are stored in root. So if my root system is corrupted, I cant even decrypt home....

Any advice is welcome..

The Linux Ship of Theseus

1. pick any distro and install it.

2. Then, without installing another distro over the top of it, slowly convert it into another distro by replacing package managers, installed packages, and configurations.

System must be usable and fully native to the new distro (all old packages replaced with new ones).

No flatpaks, avoid snaps where physically possible, native packages only.

EDIT: Some clarification on some of the clever tools brought up here:

chroot, dd, debootstrap, and partition editors that allow you to install the new system in an empty container or blanket-overwrite the old system go against the spirit of this challenge.

These are very useful and valid tools under a normal context and I strongly recommend learning them.

You can use them if you prefer, but The ship of Theseus was replaced one board at a time. We are trying to avoid dropping a new ship in the harbor and tugging the old one out.

It may however be a good idea to use them to test out the target system in a safe environment as you perform the migration back in the real root, so you have a reference to go by.

Easy: pick two similar distros, such as Ubuntu and Debian or Manjaro and Arch and go from the base to the derivative.

Medium: Same as easy but go from the derivative to the base.

Hard: Pick two disparate distros like Debian and Artix and go from one to the other.

Nightmare: Make a self-compiled distro your target.

Please allow me to share a little bit too much before going to the point of the post.

Last November I decided to enroll in a course to get official recognition of something I've been doing for the last twenty years, which is to put together and install computers. The course is Computer Hardware and Repair/Fault Diagnosis (loose translation)

I learned the hard way, by myself, making mistakes and taking apart old machines and trying to revive hardware I was constantly told it was useless and/or obsolete. Linux was a great part of this. I'm an obnoxious FOSS/Linux crusader and I'm not ashamed.

In order to finish a course where I gained absolutely zero new knowledge and was taken as non-serious for stating I do not use anything but Linux for my daily computer needs I now have to, with no relation whatsoever and classes on it, design on paper a computer network.

Because I'm petty, I'd like to design it completely around Linux and FOSS solutions. Just to mess with the people that have even imposed I have to write the assigment in Word, with Arial font.

Please, point me towards some sources I can use. Nothing too in depth is necessary.

Makes you pretend you are working for NASA or for the FBI.

Instructions on how to compile the code and everything else can be found inside the code right here.

I've been toying with Linux on and off for almost 20 years now.

Started with damnsmalllinux on some ancient 600mhz Thinkpads. Dual booted Ubuntu for a long time, back when 3d desktop cubes were all the rage, so I'm used to gnome, synaptic and apt.

Tried to stick with it, but never could get away from Windows entirely. Especially for gaming, and a few critical apps. Eventually I kind of drifted away, and went full Windows for years. I always keep an Ubuntu LTS thumb drive around, and would use it occasionally for various reasons, testing etc etc.

Recently I installed Ubuntu 24.04, and had tons of stability issues. Mostly involving video output and the GUI. Screen would jitter left and right a few pixels. And sometimes maximized windows would be transparent to clicks, so you'd be clicking random stuff below the window. This was especially bad with Firefox and VLC, separately. I also had issues with removable drives not mounting properly. Standard stuff, I wasn't doing anything weird. Practically a fresh install.

So I tried Mint, cinnamon. And so far I really like it! I've not been running it daily, but just the same tinkering. And so far no issues at all. But that got me thinking, what else am I missing?

I'm comfortable in the command line, but not proficient, I appreciate a good GUI for most things.

I plan to do some gaming, so steam proton compatibility is important. I don't think that's hard to achieve, but I wanted to make sure, it's important to me.

Last time I played with KDE was a decade ago, I hear there's lots of new developments going on there? In plasma? Unless plasma is different now, IDK I haven't looked extremely hard.

I don't care much about customization, I don't want arch. I want something that is a pretty solid base, with decent features, and good support for when this go sideways. I feel like that's not Ubuntu anymore. Especially with them pushing into Wayland and flat packs.

I guess my question is, does Mint seem like a good distro to start with? Or am I not looking hard enough?

Thanks!

(Source Code)

This is still a work-in-progress and was mostly made for fun. All it does is read from a list of files in ~/.config/rblx_launcher/ and display them to be clicked, launching xdg-open with the placeId.

The files (friends.txt and games.txt) are formatted like so:

Name
ID
%

Hii to all linux users, hope you can help me.

I updated my system a couple of days ago, pop os 24.04 LTS and wifi stoped working. The problem is i dont have wire so wifi is only connection to the internet curently. And i managed to lose it.. So i tryed to fix the problem by switching to older kernel but it didnt fix the problem unfortinetly.

I gave up and reinstalled whole system thinking it will fix it. And since i do it i decided to try new cosmic alpha system. So i downloaded that and i like it despite its not finished and it has bugs and missing features. But that didnt fix my wifi problem! Its still not working.

I have two ssd-s, so on my main one 1TB i have linux and thats what im using, but on second one 500GB i have windows 10 for some games that doesnt work on linux. So i was using that to download latest pop os and my wifi card works so its obviusly not dead or anything.

I plan to get wire but i have some drilling to do for that and i would like to fix wifi card before that if possinble.

Almost forgot, my wifi card is Asus pcie card, with two antenas, its red and wery beautifull. Tryed to uploud picture of it but my acount is new so that wasnt possible. I dont know exact model number but this one looks exactly like mine so meabu its that one.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=asus+wifi+pcie+card&t=iphone&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fpisces.bbystatic.com%2Fimage2%2FBestBuy_US%2Fimages%2Fproducts%2F6267%2F6267000_sd.jpg&pn=1

Hey folks. I recently got an old X220 with an mSATA SSD. I plan to to install Linux on there. It doesnt matter which OS: Debian, Ubuntu or Arch. The machine is so old that all distros play nice with it.

Anyway, the speed on the mSATA is slower than the 2.5 SSD. So I want to know if is it possible to have your /boot, /efi, swap on the mSATA. Then, the /home on the 2.5 SSD? Any problems with this setup and if anyone tried it before?

Now, for the reasons why I use mSATA instead of just putting Linux on 2.5 SSD:

1. the mSATA is Samsung, pretty rare nowadays. The health is still very excellent. I checked with CrystalDiskInfo. So might as well use it.

2. My X220 has a problem finding out grub if installed on the 2.5 SSD. It's literally a 50/50 chance it can find grub properly. So:

a) you installed Linux on 2.5 SSD, reboot.

b) grub error screen

c) restart

d) boot into Linux well

Note at d) if I do anything to restart/shutdown the computer, you are back at step b) and require another reboot to reach Linux.

Any advice is welcome.

Hi all, Relatively long time Linux user (2017 to be precise), and about two 3rds of that time has been on Arch and its derivatives.

Been running Endeavour OS for at least 2.5 years now. It's a solid distro until it's not. I'd go for months without a single issue then an update comes out of nowhere and just ruins everything to either no return, or just causes me to chase after a fix for hours, and sometimes days. I'm kinda getting tired of this trend of sudden and uncalled for issues.

It's like a hammer drops on you without you seeing it. I wish they were smaller issues, no, they're always major. Most of the time I'd just reinstall, and I hate that. It's so much work for me.

I set things the way I like them and then they're ruined, and the hunt begins. I have been wanting to switch for a long time, and I honestly have even been looking into some of those immutable distros (that's how much I don't want to be fixing my system.

I'm tired, I just want to use my system to get work done). I was also told that Nobara is really good (is it? Never tried it). My only hold back — and it's probably silly to some of you— is the AUR. I love it.

It's the most convenient thing ever, and possibly the main reason why I have stuck with Arch and its kids. Everything is there.

So, what do y'all recommend? I was once told by some kind soul to use an immutable distro and setup "distrobox" on it if I wanted the AUR.

I've never tried this "distrobox" thing (I can research it, no problem). I also game here and there and would like to squeeze as much performance as I can out of my PC (all AMD, BTW, and I only play single player games).

So, I don't know what to do. I need y'all's suggestions, please. I'll aggregate all of the suggestions and go through them and (hopefully) come up with something good for my sanity. Please suggest anything you think fits my situation. I don't care, I will 100% appreciate every single suggestion and look into it.

I'm planning to take it slow on the switch, and do a lot of research before switching. Unless my system shits the bed more than now then I don't know. I currently can't upgrade my system, as I wouldn't be able to log in after the update. It just fails to log in.

I had to restore a 10 days old snapshot to be able to get back into my damn desktop. I have already copied my whole home directory into another drive I have on my PC, so if shit hits the fan, I'll at least have my data. Help a tired brother out, please <3. Thank you so much in advance.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/26951027

Draft Release Notes: https://testing.gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-3.0.html

Will soon be published to Flathub

Hey guys, after 2 years since my last attempt (and recently trying fedora on my laptop) Im ready to try again to install it on my desktop. First time I installed Nobara and it nuked my windows boots partition which caused a lot of trouble and trauma (couldnt boot into windows no matter what). Basically I want to accomplish this:

1- I want to install Fedora on a separate drive and keep my windows drive completely intact (Need it for work).
2- Preferably I would like GRUB to ask which boot option I want to use if my linux drive is set to be my boot drive and to boot straight to windows if its my windows drive set to boot.

Can someone please guide me into installing it the safest way possible?

Apparently there's a bunch of projects getting hit with this, fairly obscure ones though. Project gets forked, suddenly get a pile of stars more than the original, and then there's a curl-bash pipe inserted into it that runs some ransomeware that encrypts ~/Documents.

About a dozen other projects linked in here from another developer (excuse the Reddit link): https://old.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/1jbzuot/someone_copied_our_github_project_made_it_look/

Hello,

I'm adjusting pp_table settings to get most out of my GPU (RX 6800 XT) and it works but every time I restart PC the changes revert back to default. Any idea how I could make them persist?

For me pp_table is located in /sys/class/drm/card1/device/pp_table

I have to use chmod to be able to make changes:

sudo chmod o+w /sys/class/drm/card1/device/pp_table

Then I'm able to write in changes with upp:

upp -p /sys/class/drm/card1/device/pp_table set --write smc_pptable/SocketPowerLimitAc/0=312 smc_pptable/SocketPowerLimitDc/0=293 smc_pptable/TdcLimit/0=300 smc_pptable/FreqTableSocclk/1=1350 smc_pptable/FreqTableFclk/1=2000 smc_pptable/FclkBoostFreq=2000

And just in case you're wondering if the effort even makes sene, yes it does:

Max OC with LACT with max default limits (left) vs max OC with edited pp_table (right) in the picture.

Hey, I have a pc that I would like to install light Linux distribution on but I don’t want to do it because my computer has weak parts but because I want to save up on space and make pc focus so it could stream games that would be installed on it and then I could simply stream games from it instead of downloading them on different devices. Would anyone have any recommendations for said distro?

I am using a AMD RX 7800 XT and noticed that my idle power consumption has went up recently from ~5-10W to ~30W. After some investigation I found out it was caused by the change to the default power profiles from BOOTUP_DEFAULT to 3D_FULLSCREEN in 6.13. When in 3D_FULLSCREEN profile, the GPU memory clock won't transition to the lowest clock speed and consuming extra ~20W (!!) of power.

To fix this, I have to manually change the power profile using following commands (as root):

echo 'manual' > /sys/class/drm/card1/device/power_dpm_force_performance_level
# check the available power profiles to get the index
cat /sys/class/drm/card1/device/pp_power_profile_mode
# normally 0 = BOOTUP_DEFAULT
echo 0 > /sys/class/drm/card1/device/pp_power_profile_mode

(you may need to change card1 to card0 depends on your system)

Note that the configuration is not persisted across reboot and you may encounter shuttering during gaming with BOOTUP_DEFAULT.

I recommend to use tools like LACT to automatically apply the power profile on startup and also automatically switch the profile to 3D_FULLSCREEN when running games.

Edit: you should check you current GPU idle power consumption first (with nvtop or lm_sensors) before applying the change, the issue may not affect all AMD GPU

I found some thread on the Discord saying that you should

install using abroot should be the Best option

But then nobody posts how to do that...

Have any VanillaOS 2.0 Orchrid users here successfully installed Tailscale?

I'm trying it out for the first time and reading the handbook here: https://docs.vanillaos.org/handbook/en/updates

However, I noticed the page says:

This guide is for Kinetic (22.10), not Orchid.

And when I tried running command to check for updates, I got this.

$ vso update-check
Error: unknown command "update-check" for "vso"
Run 'vso --help' for usage.
  ERROR   unknown command "update-check" for "vso"

I could wait for the normal update job to run, but I'm being impatient. :)

cross-posted from: https://futurology.today/post/4000823

And by burned, I mean "realize they have been burning for over a year". I'm referring to a bug in the Tor Browser flatpak that prevented the launcher from updating the actual browser, despite the launcher itself updating every week or so. The fix requires manual intervention, and this was never communicated to users. The browser itself also doesn't alert the user that it is outdated. The only reason I found out today was because the NoScript extension broke due to the browser being so old.

To make matters worse, the outdated version of the browser that I had, differs from the outdated version reported in the Github thread. In other words, if you were hoping that at least everybody affected by the bug would be stuck at the same version (and thus have the same fingerprint), that doesn't seem to be the case.

This is an extreme fingerprinting vulnerability. In fact I checked my fingerprint on multiple websites, and I had a unique fingerprint even with javascript disabled. So in other words, despite following the best privacy and security advice of:

1. using Tor Browser
2. disabling javascript
3. keeping software updated

My online habits have been tracked for over a year. Even if Duckduckgo or Startpage doesn't fingerprint users, Reddit sure does (to detect ban evasions, etc), and we all know 90% of searches lead to Reddit, and that Reddit sells data to Google. So I have been browsing the web for over a year with a false sense of security, all the while most of my browsing was linked to a single identity, and that much data is more than enough to link it to my real identity.

How was I supposed to catch this? Manually check the About page of my browser to make sure the number keeps incrementing? Browse the Github issue tracker before bed? Is all this privacy and security advice actually good, or does it just give people a false sense of security, when in reality the software isn't maintained enough for those recommendations to make a difference? Sorry for the rant, it's just all so tiring.

Edit: I want to clarify that this is not an attack on the lone dev maintaining the Tor Browser flatpak. They mention in the issue that they were fairly busy last year. I just wanted to know how other people handled this issue.