Linux

Looking to purchase an old cheap macbook air 2018 just as a spare laptop but i understand it has T2 chip which may not go well. Just wondering if anyone here has already tried Linux in this macs and is it in a usable state?

From the press release [my emphasis]:

Require operating system developers like Apple and Google to verify users’ ages when setting up a new device, rather than relying on self-reported ages.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/25834609

The U.S. has been quietly building up a set of state-level laws that push operating system providers into the age verification plague.

California's AB 1043, signed in October 2025, requires OS providers to collect age data at account setup and pipe it to apps through a real-time API. It kicks in on January 1, 2027.

Colorado is working on something nearly identical. SB26-051 (which we covered when it was still a proposal) passed the state Senate 28-7 on March 3, 2026, and is now waiting on a House vote to become law there too.

However, these are just state-level laws. A new federal bill, H.R.8250, introduced on April 13, 2026, by Rep. Josh Gottheimer, with Rep. Elise M. Stefanik signing on as cosponsor, has us intrigued.

The introduction by the creator:

It's in https://distro.fedesito.me/ , It's a Pokedle inspired game, in which you try to choose the Linux distro based on it's characteristics/features.

If you want to add features/distros feel free to do a pull request, the project is opensource at my ShitHub (link in website).

EDIT: fixed some bugs and added instructions

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1sm1jhz/i_made_a_linux_distro_guessing_game/

gotta post this before I break anything with the upgrade :P (it probably won't, but better safe than sorry)

I have been having a ton of fun messing with this, hooking up a dock and a kb/mouse, so funny using my phone this way. More of a party trick than actually useful, for me anyway. if one didn't have laptops, i could see it being handy.

What have you guys been using termux for? The biggest value I saw from it was using ffmpeg on it, and ssh for fun. I can't really figure out what other uses I may want it for. Backups maybe?

I'm not rooted, so I can't do a lot on this crappy samsung, but it's fun to play around.

A sample journey when trying to install software:

• Try your distros repos, it’s either not there or an older version
• Oh wait, you need to add their repo to your list and try again
• Actually, they don’t have a repo, but you can install this deb/rpm from their site
• Nevermind, it actually needs to be installed with pip to get the latest version
• Or wait, it was actually a rust package and needs cargo
• Well, this package is available as a snap
• Screw it, I’ll just build it from source…. Except the dependencies I need take me through the entire journey again

It’s crazy with a large package like mesa. It uses meson, which requires it be installed via pip, and also needs rust which is best installed via a snap, but then there are dependencies it needs that require multiple paths…

On Windows: find the msi or exe and be done with it.

I love this sort of guerilla open source activism.

The whole "manifesto" style of the main webpage is extremely well done and makes a compelling argument, even if we don't choose this as our core distro.

I like that it also serves as a good page to send to even non-Linux folks, to explain why these dystopian cudgel laws must be resisted at every turn.

Why do you think people hate OS Linux?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Use_Areas

I came across a Python library that passed the ASCII range into one of these non printable character ranges and then into a database. If someone was doing that manually with a hex table, how is that detected and mitigated?

Because I express my creativity through shitcode, I named my development hardware appropriately.

It's actially xn--og8h8z because /etc/hostname is allowed to contain only ASCII Latin characters, numbers, and dash, but converting emojis to Punycode using command idn 🌈💩 does the job.

I can log into my Raspberry using command ssh user@🌈💩 however Bash login shell still shows untranslated Punycode hostname instead of rainbow poop symbols, so the support is not yet fully there, and avahi-resolve-address shows hex codes of UTF-8 emojis.

I'm using Debian 13 btw.

Used OpenVPN for years. Seems people are moving away from that and switching to wireguard enabled VPNs. Any recs for a good one on Raspbian? If OpenVPN is still worth it I’ll stay with the known.

PPS: Please at least TRY to read the following (if possible, not just the title) with an open mind and in a spirit of tolerance. It was written in good faith by a Linux user who will be staying on Linux.

PPPS: Among all the mean-spirited downvoting and insults and calumny (hey, this is social media) I actually learned a few useful things from this discussion. Perhaps the highlight was the tip about an obscure crowdfunded project which really fits the bill. Too late this time but I'm hopeful such projects, including Pine and Framework, might be become more available and more affordable in future.

PPPPS: I do not reply to downvoters (after all, you're declaring you don't care what I have to say). Or to people who obviously have not read beyond the title. Sorry. My post is very clear and I cannot express what I wrote better. In summary: There is a worsening problem with Linux compatibility on low-end hardware, due to the decline of desktop computing and in particular to the insurgency of ARM and Mediatek. It may hurt to hear it but it's true and we should care about it. Thanks to those who offered constructive feedback.

I'm frustrated. Once again, I have had to buy a computer I didn't want in order to stay on Linux.

Some background. Compared to most people in this forum, I am a somewhat normal computer user. That is, I have not touched a mouse in decades, I use a small lightweight low-end laptop (which is not slow on Linux), and I do not take anything to pieces. To be clear, I'm a programmer and a massive FOSS idealist. But I've never been interested in hardware, and in this respect I'm a complete normie. Let's not forget that for most ordinary people, a "computer" these days is the tethered corporate toy in their pocket.

For me this slide away from free personal computing is now getting impossible to ignore.

• 20 years ago I could buy a laptop (a Fujitsu) from a major European electronics retailer which came with a Linux CD - a Linux CD! (Kanotix, a Debian variant).
• In the late 2010s, I had a nice choice of cheap Taiwanese Wintel netbooks. So there was a Windows tax to pay but at least the hardware worked fine.
• 4 years ago, the options were getting thin on the ground. For 400€ I could find only one Linux-compatible X86 laptop, made by Acer. And since I didn't have a Linux live USB, I had to (fake-) register the thing with Microsoft in order to get access to the damn web.
• Today, there's almost nothing left. Intel laptops have all but disappeared from the budget aisle, replaced by ARM-powered Chromebooks and, increasingly, big Android tablets with keyboards. Putting non-spyware Linux on these things is often possible, sort of, but it's a nightmare. You're back to the 2010 era of ROM-flashing on Android, using repos from random developers and wading through impenetrable forum discussions. It's a massive PITA. This is not the way computing should be done, and normal users will never do it even if they were capable. It's hardly secure either.

The geeky suggestion which I can hear coming, "buy a secondhand Thinkpad", is not a proper solution. It's a band-aid fix with a timeout (PS: meaning it's on the way to EOL). Hardware from the likes of Tuxedo and Framework is nice but too heavy (PS: correction, Framework is not heavy) and way too expensive for me. The Pinebook Pro is always out of stock.

And anyway, for years I have wanted to move from a laptop to a convertible tablet (like the Surface or Lenovo's Yoga and Duet lines) (PS: meaning the form factor pioneered by those models, the cheap options these days are invariably on ARM). It makes so much sense ergonomically and even in terms of maintenance. (Keyboards have moving parts. I have to change my Acer because it has a faulty keyboard which cannot be fixed except professionally at prohibitive cost. Crazy.) But none of these computers are easily compatible with Linux. It's possible, yes, but hardly simple.

I considered, for a fleeting moment, throwing in the towel. After 20 years.

And then bought yet another laptop, basically the same model as last time except a Chromebook. I know I'll get an OS I control onto it without too much stress. That's a relief. But I'm more worried than ever about how this story is going to end.

PS: I should have predicted the bitterness and negativity and cynicism I would provoke simply by sharing my thoughts and feelings in good faith. Social media is absolutely incorrigible. In the meantime I will of course be staying on Linux, as I thought I described.

Hi guys. I've been using Linux for 2-3 years now. So far I have had great success with RDP access on Ubuntu and Zorin (GNOME) DEs.

I just installed Debian with XFCE. I installed XRDP but for the life of me I cannot get it working. Anyone have any tips to access remotely? I'm open to solutions other than XRDP too. Thanks!

AMENDMENT Ubuntu 24.04 cannot install onto NVMe, at all, no matter what.

I tried it with a non-switched PCIe adapter, & it still couldn't work.

Sorry I got it wrong, before.

Now I'm working to discover if 25.10 can install to NVMe ( in spite of Lubuntu's broken build-essential package, & the idiocy of Lubuntu telling us to file bug-reports in the Ubuntu One ( or whatever ) system, but that system not allowing that Lubuntu is a tracked project, so there's NO bug-reporting place for it. Idiocy. ).

I'll update this again whether it works or not, so you don't have to do these stupid experiments to discover the fundamentals.

The performance-difference is sooo spectacular, that the engineers who wouldn't include NVMe on the board-itself .. cannot be considered loyal to the potential of the devices they're engineering, tbh: they essentially "Celeron'd" the things by making them use microSDXC, which .. not my values )

TL;DR:

IF you use Geerling's rpi-clone tool, THEN DON'T name your new root partition, let it do all the config by UUID,

AND if you have NVMe on a dual-device board, through a PCIe-switch chip, then your ONLY option is to boot from RasPi OS, because Ubuntu 24.04 LTS simply won't work through that: they configured the kernel to not be capable of it.

( didn't bother trying 25.10, because on the destop, Lubuntu 25.10 CAN'T INSTALL build-essential PACKAGE, so that breaks EVERYthing for my learning-programming machine, & I need both to be using the same OS, version-included, so I don't get driven mad by UX-inconsistencies : )

This took waaay too long to figure-out, so I'm putting it here for others, so you don't have to bash your brain against the damn wall, like I did.

Geerling's rpi-clone tool, available from geerlingguy's github,

# Install rpi-clone.
git clone https://github.com/geerlingguy/rpi-clone.git
cd rpi-clone
sudo cp rpi-clone rpi-clone-setup /usr/local/sbin

# Clone to the NVMe drive (usually nvme0n1, but check with `lsblk`).
sudo rpi-clone nvme0n1

has a gotcha: if you name the new root-partition, then it won't be able to mount it, in my experience.

Once named, that root-partition can't be mounted when booting from NVMe, by /dev/nvme0n1p2, not by LABEL=whatever. ( didn't try UUID mount )

You need to have it identical in your linux-kernel cmdline.txt ( which is in your /boot/firmware/ dir, aka your 1st-partition ) and in your /etc/fstab ( which is in your 2nd partition ).

That took ages to learn, too.

Let the rpi-clone util have NO name for the new root partition, & then it'll correctly give UUID identifiers to both of those files, for your new root.

Then it'll work in Raspberry Pi OS.

However, nothing one does can get Ubuntu's 24.04 LTS to boot from dual-device/PCIe-switched NVMe adapter/"hat": apparently Ubuntu pruned-out the kernel's ability to work through a PCIe-switch, breaking all dual-NVMe-adapter-boards from being able to work.

( updated-system is current @ 2026-04-02, in case they update it in the future )

I'd wanted to someday switch to BTRFS raid1, but .. that's impossible, unless remaining in RasPi OS, which I don't want to do, because too many things consider Ubuntu to be the only default-config.

As Torvalds identified: it's hell to make an app work with multiple distros, due to too-little being standard between them all, hence the "just do Ubuntu" paradigm that's substituting for app-developer's standard..

( & snaps/flatpaks are usually x86_64 only, ttbomk, so that doesn't help, either )

Yeah, I know, Arch's got a Rpi4 ( or greater ) version, & yes, I've tried it,

but I really want to stop doing sysadmin, & just do learning Haskell, THE programming-language for developing one's ability to think & to prevent-bugs in programs, if done correctly.

( no side-effects-distributed-throughout-the-entire-codebase, pure-functional, & type-level programming all contribute to that )

May you not hit all the damn corner-cases in the world,

_ /\ _

I'm new to wayland and still shopping around for a tiling wm that makes me happy. I'm familiar with ratpoison, and hear cagebreak might be a suitable alternative?

• https://github.com/project-repo/cagebreak
• https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Cagebreak

libgdata, the library that coordinates communication between GNOME apps and Google's APIs, has gone without a maintainer for nearly four years. [...] It was the only remaining reason libsoup2 was still present in the GNOME stack, at a time when libsoup2 was already being phased out ahead of the GNOME 44 release. Currently, Debian's security tracker lists many open CVEs against it, covering everything from HTTP request smuggling to authentication flaws.

cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/62952528

An internal memo dispatched by senior execs at Red Hat suggests the software biz is starting to push AI tooling within its Global Engineering department. RHEL may be about to get some Windows 11-style "improvements."

It carries the heading "Engineering that's evolved and amplified for the AI era," and for any AI skeptics in the developer teams at Red Hat, the tone of the email may raise alarm bells. The times are changing, it states.

Been building Voiden, an API IDE on Electron. Not really “just an API client”, and not a(nother) thin wrapper around a webapp either.

Made it intially available for Windows and Mac, but after getting requests from folks who work on Linux, we added Linux support a few months ago, before open-sourcing it. (That's actually one of the reasons we picked electron :to be able to ship fast and have cross platform consistency across Linux, Mac and Windows.)

Repo: https://github.com/VoidenHQ/voiden

So far, Voiden is available on Linux via:

• .deb for Ubuntu and Debian-based distros .rpm for Fedora, RHEL, and other RPM-based distros
• .AppImage for a portable option that should work across most distributions
• .AUR package for Arch users : https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/voiden-beta-appimage

Definitely considering adding more like Nix or Flatpak, but we are working to get our priorities right: Which ones would you actually use and prefer?

A disclaimer about the tool: Since we didn't want to build yet another (cheaper) clone of Postman, Voiden looks and feels very different:

• The UI is "programmable": Requests are “built” with slash commands from blocks (endpoints, headers, auth, params, bodies, etc.), like LEGO blocks but for API components. Or like Notion for APIs.

• These blocks can be also reused in different APIs to have ALL common elements done in one single file. You can then change them once and it will all get updated in all the other docs. Just like in code when we add an extra logic to an imported method. (In other API clients you would need to duplicate stuff or just use environment variables to substitute.)

• API Specs, tests, and docs live together in executable Markdown.

Welcome to try it out and let us know: what works, what breaks, and which packaging or distro support would make Voiden easiest for you?

Strong opinions are encouraged. :)

Github : https://github.com/VoidenHQ/voiden Download here : https://voiden.md/download

Git native, No login, No accounts, No telemetry.

I have a laptop I take with me that has UFW. I want to allow Syncthing from my home subnet and another place. Is there a way I can do that without allow from anywhere?

Additionally, is the default ufw allow service-name/port, where it allows from anywhere, insecure? Like, does it open the port to the internet, for anyone to see or connect to?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/62536902

The ongoing discussions about age-verification and changes in Free and Open-Source Software and GNU Linux and related OSs made me realize a gross misunderstanding on my part. I think many other users may have the same misunderstanding (seeing many comments using the word "traitors"), and it's important that we become aware of it. We must understand that using or saying “FOSS” or “Linux” does not automatically mean to stand up for human rights, for the community, against corporations, and similar goals and values.

If we read the comments in those age-verification discussions we can see that many developers and possibly also users make statements like “the developers have no obligation towards the community”, “the law is the law, no matter what the community wants”, “we must comply”, and similar. It’s important to realize that many developers work on FOSS not out of consideration for the community, or for human rights, or against corporations. For them it’s just one kind of software development. We may have projects that are FOSS and pro-corporations or pro-surveillance. The "F" in FOSS stands for freedom to modify and distribute the software by/to anyone in the community. It doesn’t stand for “software that promotes / stands up for general human freedom and human rights". But of course there are also developers that work with FOSS because of such values.

So for anyone who, like me, wants to use and promote software as an assertion of, and a stand for, human rights and against corporations, it’s necessary not to stop at “FOSS” or “Linux” but apply more scrutiny and more careful choices. Probably it's always been like this, but the present times require extra awareness.

I wish there was an acronym or other word that made this moral aspect of some FOSS development clear. This would help users to recognize software projects that share their values, and also those FOSS developers who do work for those values. Is there such a term already out there?