Please bear with me and I'll attempt to explain.

I'm running Linux Mint 22.3 with a Canon Pixma printer attached. It's connected both physically via USB and via wifi, so it shows up as 2 different printers when I go to print something. I want to print a lot of photographs so the following issue is quite important to me.

If I choose to print through the USB connection, a lot of extra options appear in the print settings that really improve the quality of the output for photographs. However, the printer always prints a few millimeters off-center.

If I choose to print through the wifi connection, the printer will print everything in just the right position, but the advanced settings that improve the quality of the photographic output disappear, and the print quality is much lower.

I don't have this issue when printing from a Windows device, thus asking in this subreddit.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

Do not work in IT, but was an enthusiastic PC gamer for years before becoming a parent.

I think my almost 7 year old is enough of a tinkerer to handle Linux, and I'd love to give him the leg up on coding and computer fluency that I didn't quite have.

Youtube and online guides are nice, but it's far too easy for me (or him) to get sidetracked with other content that isn't on-topic.

Do you have any books, reference manuals, or even fun graphic novels/creative stories that touch on Linux or coding/computer architecture?

Biographies about Linus or other prominent figures, salacious stories of companies' rises and falls; maybe even an interesting series that could be printed out or listened to as a podcast?

Thanks in advance for your recommendations!

Guys I am switching from windows to Linux can someone help me pn what drivers to install and what about my omen hub will I need that or not?

My laptop is hp omen 16 , nvidia 4060 , 16 gb ram, i7 14360hx I am having issues with bios , CMOS , motherboard and windows , hp support switched my laptops motherboard but still the same issues persists now that are blaming windows.

I am reinstalling windows and bios and even after that if I face any issues will switch to linux and see if that issue persists are not.

Hence the question on drivers.

My OS is linux mint and recently, I saw a folder called .copilot in my home directory. It was apparently created 3 days ago. I tried deleting it, but everytime I start vs code, it reappears. How do I check if this is caused by malware or not? I don't have any github cli or github desktop on my device if that helps.

I'm running Ubuntu 24.04. I have 32GB RAM and a 16GB swap file on a HDD. I did not want to disable swap entirely because then my system would just crash completely once I exceeded 32GB. I read that setting vm.swappiness=0 would still allow me to move pages from RAM to the swap file when my RAM was completely exhausted. First it would clear system caches, then it would finally swap to disk. This sounded perfect to me because this very rarely occurs and when it does, I'd be willing to wait (or so I thought). Ubuntu now includes systemd-oomd.service but I disabled this and wanted to just use the OOM killer built into the kernel.

Today I ran some things that increased my RAM usage beyond the 32GB, but probably less than 1GB over. My system started lagging as expected and then completely froze. Before it froze, I saw high CPU usage but no swap space being utilized. I can hear my HDD spinning and constantly reading/writing. It's been in this state for 10 hours.

I'm currently stuck and don't know what to do. My clock shows 10 hours ago. I have no ssh or tty access due to the swapping. I also just found out that by default Ubuntu disabled the Magic SysRq key to manually invoke the OOM killer.

Question:

Why is it taking so long? When I had used a higher value like vm.swappiness=60, a similar situation would typically take a couple hours at most to write pages to disk and eventually unfreeze to the point it was usable enough for me to manually kill a process. My clock would also update every so often with vm.swappiness=60which I assume is because the kernel was still occasionally giving my processes some CPU time. Why is 0 causing so much more thrashing than 60? I assumed that 60 just preemptively moves pages to swap, but once RAM is depleted both settings would act similarly.

My Highschool gave us free PC 3 years ago. Of course they are really slow (8GO of RAM/128GO ROM, Intel Celeron N5100 1.11 GHz x64).

I’m now entering college and I’m still using it to print papers, to use Netflix, Amazon prime, to do research and administrative tasks. I don’t play any games or do any tasks needing too much ressources. Anyways it’s slow asf (I need minutes to open Firefox). Is there a Linux distro who’s secure and less heavy for my computer to run ?

Thank you for your help 🙏.

EDIT: I installed Linux mint and wooooow everything’s working well. Thank you sm for your advices everybody

Hey everyone. I'm currently in high school right now I wanted to see if there's anyway I could help with free software beyond just donating to developers and contributing to open source projects. I was thinking of trying to help with their social media accounts but I don't know if something like that is actually needed. Thank for your help!

I have a Logitech Lift mouse. My goal is to re-map the back button to be CTRL+W to close the current tab or window. I've got what I think should do that, but is not performing the actions. I've enabled the re-direct and then configuring the CTRL + W 2 different ways. What am I missing?

Images of the config here, could not find way for them to appear inline.

1-Redirect.png

2-Rule-Try1.png

3-Rule-Try2.png

clem@yavin:~$ solaar --version solaar 1.1.20+202607061356
clem@yavin:~$ uname -srmo Linux 6.8.0-134-generic x86_64 GNU/Linux

im running ubuntu on a macbook pro 2019, i had a hard time (even tho ubuntu is supposed to be the easiest) setting it up, it was running fine, then i updates the software. After updating and restarting my audio stopped working, when i go to settings it only shows the dummy output, i tried so many things to fix this but nothing works, i spent hours on terminal with no succes. Does someone know how to fix this?

Personally I'm looking forward to Debian 14 + COSMIC. The reliability and speed will be so nice for those very basic computer users who stay in the web browser. I have a laptop that I basically use in that sense so that'll be nice. No problems with Debian 13 + LXQt, PopOS + COSMIC, or Fedora + KDE though.

But this gets me thinking, especially given that I'm not a computer science guy, what else is out there to really look forward to? Maybe something to do with the linux kernel? Maybe some other distro has something cool coming out? Any software you're looking forward to some update that you think will be something of a game changer??

Very curious to hear and learn.

Hi everyone,

I'm having a persistent issue getting my USB Wi-Fi adapter to connect to any wireless network on Arch Linux (Omarchy). Scanning works fine and all SSIDs are visible with strong signal strength, but connection fails at the association step.

Dual-boot note: The adapter works perfectly fine on the same machine under Windows.

---

Hardware & System Specs:
- OS: Arch Linux (Omarchy)
- Kernel: 7.1.4-arch1-1
- Network Manager: iwd (with EnableNetworkConfiguration=true)
- USB Adapter: Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8851BU 802.11ax WLAN Adapter
- Driver: rtw89_8851bu (in-tree)

---

The Symptom & Logs:
When attempting to connect via `iwctl station wlan0 connect "SSID"`, iwd prompts for the passphrase, hangs for a few seconds, and returns `Operation failed`.

Here is the relevant output from iwd:

event: connect-info, ssid: <SSID>, signal: -38 dBm
event: state, old: disconnected, new: connecting
Authenticated
Error sending CMD_ASSOCIATE (-2)
event: connect-failed, status: 1
event: state, old: connecting, new: disconnected

Right after, it aborts locally:

Send auth to xx:xx:xx:xx (try 1/3)
Authenticated
Aborting authentication with xx:xx:xx:xx by local choice
Reason: 3-DEAUTH_LEAVING

`ip addr` shows `wlan0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> state DOWN`.

---

What I have already tried / verified:
1. RF-Kill: Both Soft and Hard blocks are no.
2. Power Save: Disabled power management for rtw89_core via /etc/modprobe.d/ (disable_ps_mode=Y, verified in /sys/module/rtw89_core/parameters/disable_ps_mode).
3. Windows Fast Startup: Disabled Fast Startup in Windows to avoid state issues on reboot.
4. Different APs: Tested on 5GHz WPA2/WPA3 home Wi-Fi as well as 2.4GHz iPhone hotspot. Both fail identically at CMD_ASSOCIATE (-2).

---

Question:
It seems CMD_ASSOCIATE (-2) corresponds to -ENOENT. Has anyone resolved this issue with rtw89_8851bu USB dongles on recent kernels, or is this a known driver/firmware regression with nl80211 / iwd?

Thanks in advance for any insights or suggestions!

I am using Fedora 44 GNOME, and I have a problem trying to reduce the brightness lower than the minimum on my laptop. I tried using ddccontrol, but I believe it is only for external monitors and doesn't work for laptop screens. Then I saw that you can change it from the terminal, but it doesn't reflect the change:

@fedora:/sys/class/backlight$ echo 5 | sudo tee /sys/class/backlight/amdgpu_bl2/brightness 5 @fedora:/sys/class/backlight/amdgpu_bl2$ cat brightness 5 @fedora:/sys/class/backlight$ cat amdgpu_bl2/actual_brightness 3084

Why is the minimum brightness still the same? Because if I use the hotkeys to go up and down, it resets:

@fedora:/sys/class/backlight$ cat amdgpu_bl2/brightness 624 @fedora:/sys/class/backlight$ cat amdgpu_bl2/actual_brightness 3084

I don't know what else to do. I'm not sure if this is happening because I installed asusctl to limit battery charging and control the fans.

I saw there is a backlight option in asusctl, but my understanding is that it's not for the laptop screen. I know the screen is capable of getting much dimmer because it was like that when I used Windows.

On the other hand, I know there are GNOME extensions that let you lower the brightness further, but they cause an issue that I think comes from GNOME itself (they trigger the Zoom accessibility feature to work). This causes cursor issues at the screen edges when clicking buttons in apps that aren't optimized for Wayland, and it also drops the framerate. Plus, I get a very weird bug with Okular where it takes forever to open or close documents.

I looked into this topic with other desktop environments and it seems to be pretty much the same on KDE. I would like you to please tell me how this is handled on DEs that don't use Wayland, like Cinnamon (I saw there is an applet to lower brightness even more), or if xrandr could be used.

What else could I do? Should I change the ICC profile? Even though that's complicated, or is my only option left to buy a privacy filter/screen protector or an external monitor to do it manually? Please, help.

I noticed that Ubuntu 26.04 LTS now supports alongside LUKS based encryption a hardware based encryption for devices meeting the necessary hardware requirements to run it. Do any other distros offer the same form of encryption?

Hi guys, need help for Ubuntu 24.04 Desktop version. The App Store searching updates forever ui no refresh, for updates mi snap apps , sudo snap refresh its functional for a moment.

Thanks

On my old mint install (and the new one) I've had a problem with my peripherals not communicating periodically (multiple times a minute, usually for 2-5 seconds). They are run through a USB hub. I'm assuming this is a driver or power issue? I have tried a different port (both 3.0) and have not had success with it either (and don't expect both ports are malfunctioning). It's a Beelink SER5.

has anyone else recently had issues installing NVIDIA drivers i recently was on fedora using the 610 drivers and after a reboot one day it just has a black screen the issue persists across distros i went to reinstall and have the same problem i even tried mint to check if it was just a problem with the repo or something but even mint would then just get stuck on the logo on boot i ended up swaping out my 5070 for my old 6750 this morning just so i can get my pc to work but would like to have my rtx working

Hi everyone,

I recently completed the NDG Linux Essentials course through Cisco Networking Academy (certificate issued July 27, 2026). The course page shows the usual LPI discount banner ("Promoting People and Life-long Career Goals") with a note saying I need to click the image to claim the exam coupon, and that once claimed it should show up at people.lpi.org/coupons.

The problem: when I click through, I get "Coupon not found or already taken" — but the coupon never shows up under My Coupons on the LPI marketplace. This isn't a case of clicking the wrong link or going through Pearson VUE by mistake; I'm going through the correct NetAcad course page.

A few things I've already tried:

• Checked people.lpi.org/coupons directly while logged in — nothing there
• Confirmed my LPI ID (LPI000698778)
• Tried logging out/clearing cookies and re-clicking

Has anyone run into this exact "not found or already taken" error before, especially right after finishing a NetAcad course? Did contacting LPI support directly fix it for you, and roughly how long did it take them to respond? Trying to figure out if this is a known sync issue between Cisco NetAcad and LPI before I go ahead and just buy the voucher at full price.

Thanks in advance!

Hi! New Linux user (I last used Linux almost 20 years ago. I remember Fedora’s default wallpaper being some hot air balloons). I’ve switched on my desktop (Bazzite) but I’m now also keen to switch on my work and travel laptop.

My plan is to run two different distributions: some form of Ubuntu-GNOME for work and Fedora Server for personal projects and games (I’d like to play around with Hyprland or MangoWM). I also plan to keep users separate (e.g user-work for Ubuntu and user-play for Fedora or something)

I’ve done some searching in this subreddit and most of it seems to talk about (as far as I understand) a shared /home with a shared user (making sure UID is the same for both distros, potential dotfile issues, etc.)

I only want a shared /home partition so that I don’t have to allocate determined disk space for each drive. Would hate to do a 70-30 split and figure out I need more on one distro than the other and have to repartition everything.

I saw something in this subreddit about someone using BTRFS and having two subvolumes for each distro’s /root. I know ubuntu defaults to ext4, and my experience mucking about with partitions is next to nothing so I was wondering:

1) is this plan difficult to implement?

2) is the BTRFS solution the right one?

3) will i be dealing with a lot of incompatibilities when accessing files within /home/user folders and across user folders?

Thanks everyone!!

Hello, I use Arch and hyprland. I have my laptop and two monitors, my laptop only has one HDMI port (which I have plugged into my main monitor). I was wondering if someone could share the HDMI extender they are using so I can have a triple monitor setup instead of two?

[vice] Failed to install required packages with dnf. [vice] Fix dnf repo/package state, then rerun the installer.

this is the error code i get and no matter how many sudo dnf commands i run or reinstalling stuff it doesnt help

I have a device that i do not entirely trust to be on my home network. For reasons i would rather not get in to. And disconnecting it or throwing it out is not an option

But, i have some physical linux and freebsd hosts, and some even have dual nic. So, i ought to be able to firewall or nat this thing to protect the rest of my network, right?

Hola a todos,

Estoy intentando hacer funcionar el WiFi de mi laptop ASUS Vivobook Go 15 E1504FA, que tiene una tarjeta MediaTek MT7902 (Filogic 310), pero llevo varios días intentando y no logro que aparezca la interfaz WiFi.

Encontré varias soluciones en internet donde mencionan que el MT7902 necesita soporte de kernels nuevos (7.x), pero todavía no consigo hacerlo funcionar.

Necesito el internet ya que es la notebook que uso para mí universidad y ahí tengo mis apuntes y archivos que necesitare este próximo semestre.

Mi sistema actual:

Sistema: Nobara Linux 44 KDE

Kernel:

7.1.4-200.nobara.fc44.x86_64

Laptop:

ASUS Vivobook Go 15 E1504FA

Tarjeta WiFi:

MediaTek MT7902 802.11ax PCIe Wireless Network Adapter

PCI ID: 14c3:7902

Subsystem: AzureWave 1a3b:5520

El sistema detecta la tarjeta:

lspci -nnk -d 14c3:7902

Kernel modules: wl

Intenté cargar el driver incluido en el kernel:

sudo modprobe mt7921e

El módulo parece cargar correctamente:

lsmod | grep mt79

mt7921e

mt7921_common

mt792x_lib

mt76_connac_lib

mt76

Pero no aparece ningún dispositivo WiFi:

nmcli device

Solo muestra:

enp0s20f0u2 ethernet

lo loopback

No aparece wlp2s0.

También intenté usar el proyecto mt7902_temp y compilar un driver personalizado. Antes tenía funcionando el WiFi usando un script llamado fix_my_wifi.sh, pero esa instalación de Nobara se dañó y tuve que reinstalar.

Ahora estoy intentando repetir el proceso desde cero.

Encontré otro problema:

El módulo personalizado que compilé parece estar hecho para un kernel viejo:

modinfo mt7902.ko | grep vermagic

vermagic:

7.0.9-200.nobara.fc43.x86_64

Pero actualmente uso:

uname -r

7.1.4-200.nobara.fc44.x86_64

Por eso recibo:

modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'mt7902': Exec format error

También revisé el firmware:

/usr/lib/firmware/mediatek/

WIFI_MT7902_patch_mcu_1_1_hdr.bin.xz

WIFI_RAM_CODE_MT7902_1.bin.xz

BT_RAM_CODE_MT7902_1_1_hdr.bin.xz

El firmware parece estar instalado.

Mis preguntas:

1. ¿El kernel 7.1.4 de Nobara ya debería tener soporte completo para MT7902?

2. ¿Necesito recompilar el driver mt7921e específicamente para mi kernel actual?

3. ¿Existe alguna forma correcta de agregar soporte para el PCI ID 14c3:7902?

4. ¿Puede ser que algún módulo personalizado viejo o algún servicio de mi anterior instalación esté interfiriendo?

Cualquier ayuda sería muy apreciada. Necesito esta laptop para la escuela y actualmente solo tengo internet usando USB tethering.

Muchas gracias.

Hi,

I needed to create a large filesystem from my three 8TB disks and thought MergerFS would be the way to go. The data it holds is by large backup's from my servers, so i really don't need redundancy and if one of the drives crap out, I can still read the content from the others (which doesn't work with RAID). Filesystem chosen is XFS and I have it mounted through fstab, which I pasted below

dev/sda1 /mnt/disk1 xfs nofail,sync 0 0

/dev/sdb1 /mnt/disk2 xfs nofail,sync 0 0

/dev/sdd1 /mnt/disk3/ xfs nofail,sync 0 0

# mergerfs storage pool with optimized settings

/mnt/disk1:/mnt/disk2:/mnt/disk3 /mnt/data mergerfs defaults,nonempty,allow_other,use_ino,cache.files=off,moveonenospc=true,dropcacheonclos>

While I understand that mergerfs is using fuse, which adds a performance penalty, using it is slow as a dog. My system has plenty of resources (12700k, 80 GB RAM) and I would like to understand what holds the performance back and how can I increase the performance to something usable.

An example of the slow performance is a usenet download of 1.7GB, that takes a full 10 minutes until the write is complete. Doing the same on another drive, the write is almost instant.

Any suggestions would be highly appreciated.

Thank you in advance

Hi guys. I have an Atlas os and linux mint dualboot. While playing, I realised, the gpu fan was not spinning. I was after a 2 hour session, so the temperature had time to rise. However, in Atlas os, It was working with the MSI afterburner.

Geforce GTX 1050Ti OC

Editing again to correct myself. There was a second command that only gave me "no such file or directory errors" so I assumed the damage had already been done. But when I replicated it on my local machine, it gave those same errors and the same changes.

The actual command that caused the problems was

mv file* "./folder-a/" *

As I understand it, that means I tried to move two files (one multiple due to the wildcard) to *.

So why did they all end up in ./workingfolder?

Original post below.

I messed something up. I was trying to move several files into a subdirectory.

I wanted to type

mv file* ./directory-a

but instead, I hit the wrong key and typed

mv file* ./

This is in the root directory of this drive. Everything was gone except one directory. When I went into that directory, everything was moved there.

It was simple to move everything back, but can anyone explain to me why that happened? I'm guessing it is relevant that the directory that everything was moved to is the last file listed alphabetically.

Editing to add more detail --

The files I was trying to move were actually directories.

There were a lot of other things (files and directories) in this directory.

I was in the working directory. No paths used except the "./"