If you’re a complete newbie, go Ubuntu. Yes, it’s boring but the community is huge. You can find a lot of answers about problems on reddit/ stack over flow…etc. Literally any Linux problem you have, a Google search of that will show many answers from Ubuntu community.

yeh the other day I accidentally swiped down and touched the Media section. It automatically played my music, eventhough the music app was off lol. Luckily it didnt play any “videos”…

I owned 4 Samsungs: S8, S10e, S22 and S24 Ultra. Their products got worse. An example is the recent One Ui 7 update, it is just terrible: My notification area that works perfectly fine before, is now changed; my battery life got worse…etc.

Even if I ignore the update, Samsung products are just not great anymore. Remember when a Galaxy can take really great photos? Those days are gone. My S24 Ultra takes the worst pictures in comparison to a Xiaomi or Huawei. Heck, even the controversial Asus Zenfone 10 takes better picture. Sure the Galaxy has better Megapixels, but the AI bullshit makes it so the colors are all wrong.

With that said, you want to go for Pixel + GrapheneOS. Anything that is close to stock Android should be ok. Oh, and stay away from anything with a lot of AI.

That shortcut to switch between different virtual consoles is very useful. If somehow your desktop crashes, this can be used to login and fix.

Any software in Linux can be used in education, as long as the schools invest the time:

• LibreOffice can create really nice documents and presentations too. Heck, some tasks are more straightforward in LibreOffice than MS. 99% of schoolwork is done in Office suite, so this is nice. Win for Linux

• For stuff like coding in C or Python, it is even easier in Linux: download a compiler, open a text editor, type some codes then use terminal to run the codes in 10 minutes. In Windows, you need to download the stupid Cygwin and mess around with environmental variables to get Cygwin to recognize the libraries… Or if you want to automate things, MS Visual Studio will do that. The only downside is you will lose > 10 GB of space. Linux wins here again.

• Anything more advanced will unfortunately Windows land. I’m talking about advanced image programs like Photoshop or professional video apps. But again, if you need them then might as well get a Mac. Another hiccup would be in CAD software: Linux just doesnt have a good app.

Hmm let’s try to isolate the bug to know if it’s sway or gdm messing up:

Try to disable gdm: sudo systemctl disable gdm.service

Logout/restart. You should be at the TTY, enter username and password to login. Then simply type sway

Now, test your sudo commands within this sway session. Do you still get the same bug?

Yeh I started with Fedora 41 on i3 and then did the upgrade to 42. Maybe there are issues during the upgrades? Idk

I just wiped my drive and reinstalled 42 because the issue is so annoying - you cant do shit unless you logout and log back in.

I tried Fedora KDE 42 - very nice but it hang on bootup (30 seconds after login) and randomly on suspend.

Guess I’ll just stick with the official Gnome - Fedora Workstation.

So when lid is closed, OS doesnt suspend or takes long to suspend? The best way is to use journalctl. Close the lid, wait 2 - 5 mins, then open it up and check most recent journalctl messages. Hopefully that gives you some clues.

Now, are you dual booting Windows? Try to check Bios if your laptop has any funny settings for power. On Lenovo, there used to be something like “Power scheme for both Linux and Window” button…

Lastly, xfce4-power-manager app really is just a GUI for your core systemd services. So… as a test, can you not autostart it? Xfce has a setting for that. Or just remove it, you can easily install it back later.
Once youre done, reboot back and check:

1. Does closing the lid make the laptop to go into suspend mode? If yes, great. Test again to see if behavior is erratic, i.e. sometimes it takes 5 sec to suspend, sometimes it does not suspend at all…etc.

2. If above fail, try to run “systemctl suspend” to check if suspend really works on your system.

3. if 1) and 2) fail, you can play around with /etc/systemd/sleep.conf script. Maybe uncomment “AllowSuspend” or something similar…

did you end up switch everything to the 2.5 ssd?

i see, so the file names are: autostart_blocking.sh and autostart.sh

I dont need to create a weird file name like: autostart.sh &

But, whichever command I put in autostart.sh will run as if I run in terminal with the & sign. E.g: dunst & to run in the background.

yes, that is what I thought: so “dunst &” means to start dunst in the background. But the way they attach to the end of a file name is weird.

hows the search fuction in mutt? For eg, if i want to search an email thread from like 3 months ago, does it function well or do I need to open my broswer…

Well thanks everyone. I finally managed to get it to work on Arch. System has separate encrypted root and swap in LVM, and a separate encrypted home. It can suspend and hibernate. Below are my steps

DISK PREP

• partition the main drive for your swap and root first. For me, it is a boot partition + an EFI + a LUKS container with LVM on top. Create your volumes. I use Arch, so format and mount them appropriately before pacstrap. Leave out mount point for /home.

• Go to your other drive, follow: https://www.cyberciti.biz/hardware/cryptsetup-add-enable-luks-disk-encryption-keyfile-linux/

to create a LUKS container that is encrypted with: a keyfile and a password. Test both to make sure you can open the locked drive. Format and mount it at /mnt/home or where you want the /home to be.

• Pacstrap and then genfstab.
  Important: Make sure to copy the keyfile from your archiso environment to your chroot environment aka your system. Otherwise, when reboot, the keyfile is gone. I put it in /root and set permission so only root can read.

AUTOMATIC UNLOCK

• First, fstab. When you do genfstab, things should be fine. But just double check the UUID is correct for /home. Note in fstab, the UUID is the unlocked one: so the one with /dev/mapper/home. Change to noatime if you desire.

• Second, crypttab. Assume you decrypt your LUKS home as “home”. Add this:

home uuid of the unencrypted home drive location of the keyfile luks

The link above said to just use /dev/sda, but imo UUID is safer if you have a removable drive.

• Third, grub. Edit your /etc/default/grub and append the following to GRUB_CMD_LINUX:

“rd.luks.uuid=UUID of the locked luks home drive”

FOR HIBERNATION

For some reasons, hibernation doesnt work out of the box. It works when I have everything in 1 drive, i.e 1 boot, 1 efi, 1 lvm on luks for /home, swap and /. The fix is simple:

• add “resume” to /etc/mkinitcpio.conf. Add before “filesystems” . Rebuild your initramfs with mkinitcpio -P.

• add to /etc/default/grub: “resume= uuid of the unlocked swap partition”. Or if you do LVM, just use “resume=/dev/vg/swap”.

Special thanks to bodaciousFern@lemmy.dbzer0.com and Lemmchen@feddit.org for giving me correct ideas about “rd.luks.uuid” and that LUKS can do both pass and keyfile.

What do you backup with dejadup? Everything under /home?

yeh if I encrypt /home using luks with passphrase, so cryptsetup. How do I tell the OS to decrypt it? I tried passphrase before and it cannot boot because /home cannot be mounted. That is why I searched and found out about the Arch wiki way: using keyfile stored in root.

I have Fedora on my work laptop and vanilla Arch on my tinkering laptop.

I think instead of thinking about “set it and forget it”, you might want to think about “if shit happens, how fast can I fix it?”. That is because stuff break or there are bugs . If you use a very old and LTS distro, you might be comfortable but there might be bugs that do not get fixed until much later. Eg: Debian’s kernel used to be able to suspend-then-hibernate, then they jump to one that cannot. So if you want that feature back, you need to wait… until Debian catches up with mainline’s fixes.

So if you only use your computer for web, email, movie. Then any distro will work.

Now, imo there are 2 types of problems in Linux:

1. Boot/GRUB/partition problems: this can happen if you’re dual boot, or a config goes wrong. To fix, usually you need to boot a live cd.

Pop OS would be #1 choice just because it has a “Recovery Partition” with live environment. You can reinstall the entire OS while you’re on the plane, without wifi or any USB.

Arch would be #2 here, just because the arch iso is so good. It is minimal and has all the tools you need to fix stuff: partitions, wifi…etc. Plus, it boots in tty so it is faster for fixing.

2. Problems with library mismatch: for this you want one with good snapshots built in. So OpenSUSE or if you know how to configure btrfs, maybe Fedora. I would still go Pop OS here, so you can configure btrfs AND get the recovery from point 1) above. Linux Mint would be #2 choice because they have timeshift built in.

So the TLDR for you is: pick Pop OS for the recovery partition. Also, use btrfs. Lastly, configure your disk nicely, i.e. dont do any crazy LVM encryption, just use standard layout so when comes the time to fix, it is easier.

hmm thanks i’m gonna try that script you linked in artix wiki. Havent seen that one before so its worth a shot. What I usually see is some systemd Unit scripts. Gtlock looks neat as well, does swaylock give you problems too?

The only robust and no BS lock combo so far, imo, is Regolith i3wm.

For some reasons and whatever black magic eas used, this Frankenstein combo of i3 and GNOME work every single time. The downside is their configs are soooo messy. It is very hard to use whatever you have in vanilla i3 for Regolith.

I like and I do use Linux as my main OS. No dual boot BS, just pure Linux

butttttttttttttt

getting hibernate working perfectly in Linux on new hardware is PITA. I’m just happy with suspend working well, let alone hibernation.

Modern standby is the absolute shit of an invention.

This is the ONLY reason I wish I have a Mac. Forget all the memes and jokes about Apple, their laptops suspend very well. IIRC, they also have a hibernation timer built in, so if your laptop automatically hibernates after X hrs. But I dont want to be stuck in their ecosystem, so yeh…

Linux devs are not that keen to make hibernate work well either. Remember systemd dev forcefully removed the “suspend then hibernate” feature? You can still find the thread on Github lol.

try Vivaldi.