I used the audiacity to test microphone but the play back audio does not play back the sound. At least I know the microphone works.

Is there a ap that can test both before being used in a conference?

I've been using rawtherapee clone art-rawconverter without any issues until a day or two ago it fails to launch. If I try to start it in a terminal I get this message:

error while loading shared libraries: libIex-3_2.so.31: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I installed ART from the AUR.

Greetings! I made a script for syncing my documents directory with dropbox one. It requires no additinional programs and utilizes basic linux commands. I found different solutions for my task but all of them were to bulky and complicated for my taste. Also I must say that it is my first script.

https://preview.redd.it/jgwkooaoqp1e1.png?width=1317&format=png&auto=webp&s=ca4d9abff48f55204ec51385bf54ca010a741ad7

Hello, I’m currently customizing my system so I can go blazingly fast, and I thought the best place to ask this question was here.

What’s your terminal setup?

Also, I’m currently looking for something that has snippets like a VS Code extension.

vscode, fastfetch and GNOME settings on the Slim 7x

I've spent a weekend so far with the Slim 7x, getting postmarketOS up and running and trying to document the process as well as taking the chance to try daily driving a musl-based distro.

Overall bringup was fairly straightforward, the serial port is exposed via some nicely labelled testpads under the SSD which certainly made things a whole lot easier.

Bringup and installation

The hardest part was figuring out all the right modules that need to be included in the initramfs for the display and USB to work (plug keyboard for full disk encryption). This is now all described in the initial support MR https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/merge_requests/5801

It seems like dual booting with windows is the safest option for now, at least until we have a path forward for firmware. Currently the only way to get up to date GPU and DSP firmware is to receive them via windows update and then copy the files over to Linux (thankfully this will be semi-automated with woa-firmware-yoinker.

The whole installation process (at least what I ended up doing) is a bit convoluted but not really more difficult than your average Arch install. I'm hoping that it will become simpler as more parts of the process are automated (particularly when postmarketOS gets a proper installer for laptops).

For now it's just using the postmarketOS "Trailblazer" generic port, this uses Linux next so it's still missing some of the yet-to-be-upstreamed features, but it should get them as soon as they land.

An initial installation guide is published here: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Lenovo_Yoga_Slim_7x_(lenovo-yoga-slim7x)

Experience so far

Overall this machine is great, the screen is huge and looks good, touchscreen is a nice bonus (and works just fine in Linux).

In terms of performance, it beats out my 2022 ThinkPad X1 Carbon (11th Gen) by a mile, it compiles the Linux kernel more than twice as fast and manages not to burn me in the process.

The battery life seems better too but not by as much as it should be. There's definitely a lot left on the table though, I expect this to keep improving as the kernel support matures.

What's broken? Well still quite a lot...

• Camera
• Audio
• Displayport alt mode
• Lid switch and EC support (screen stays on when the lid is shut)
• Bluetooth (tested with a patched kernel and had huge issues with audio stuttering which I suspect are firmware/driver related but haven't investigated).
• Probably more??

postmarketOS on a laptop

(bias beware! These are the thoughts of someone who is heavily involved in postmarketOS development)

For those unfamiliar, postmarketOS is traditionally oriented around running upstream Linux on mobile phones (using mainline or close-to-mainline kernels). It's based on Alpine Linux but provides nice opinionated defaults and an extensive amount of hardware support on top.

With the growing number of ARM laptops (like with the last gen ThinkPad x13s) which require various kernel patches or other tweaks it's become clear that postmarketOS has a role to play, and frankly it's becoming a pretty nice lightweight and upstream-focused distro in its own right. It still lacks an installer, so some manual intervention is needed to get from a bootable USB to bootable NVME but otherwise it provides a great stock GNOME or Plasma experience.

From a Linux users perspective, Arch Linux feels like an apt (haha) comparison, and is what I'm most familiar with. In general postmarketOS (the systemd branch anyway) feels quite similar, apk as a package manager works great, and has the benefit of never leaving orphan packages behind (there's no "recommended" or "optional" dependencies feature, so a package is either installer explicitly or as a dependency of something else). Otherwise the experience is more or less identical barring a few config files differences and that postmarketOS uses doas by default instead of sudo.

I've been running the systemd branch which is still "staging" and not quite ready for prime time yet (plenty of packages are missing systemd unit files, among other issues), but frankly it's still less frustrating than dealing with openrc. So far it's been running great :D

I didn't find vscode when I first looked on flathub via GNOME Software, but it turns out non-free packages are hidden by default heh. In the mean time I got it up and running via distrobox which needed some tinkering to get set up but integrates pretty seamlessly (using a custom terminal profile to launch zsh in the host with distrobox-exec-host).

Distrobox has its own quirks but is definitely a good thing to have set up on whenever I just need something glibc.

Overall I'm pretty excited to finally be daily driving postmarketOS and ARM64 hardware!

I don't if its just me or what but I notice that Linux have better battery that Windows. It feels like Windows drains faster than using a Linux distro like Fedora or Arch. I Linux really have better battery that Windows?

A gui wrapper for a terminal emulator, that lists all of the cli programs you have installed or just generally any command you have, that on hover would show the synopsis of the command piped from its man page; that on click would give you like a sort of form with checkboxes for the options, and maybe a file browser button when an argument is a file path, with an option to make complex commands by piping and stuff.

I think it could potentially work and make using Linux a lot more intuitive for people who are used to mouse based UIs and would make using the terminal less scary

I could start work on it when I have time but I don't know if it's worth it to commit to such a project

I have been using Debian for a while now, and I love it (almost) every way. I was able to find a replacement for most everything I used on Windows, which are better in many cases. The only thing I just haven't found a good replacement for is 3D modeling/CAD. I used Solidworks and Autodesk on Windows, and out of the usual open-source alternatives on Linux, IMHO nothing even touches either of those.

Does anyone have any recommendation here? I really don't want to use WINE.

I am coming from music production world and totally frustrated with windows (and osx) all these years.
There have been so many cases that I am mostly trying to fix things on my win workstation than actually work.
Right now I am in Win 11 LTSC which was supposed to be a lighter version in a fast desktop that could just work, without the unneeded bloatware crap. Even that version is full of bugs that needs constant updates.

The audio world is missing a Linux distribution that would focus only to that.
That means low latencies and low polling rates for USB devices with a set of network tools to create a network if needed.
That's it.. So many people that's all they really want and I know that would jump over in a heartbeat if something like that was available.

Now the other big problem is developers of VST plugins and Digital Audio Workstations (which are essential for music production) to focus building on Linux. There are some devs that still do but in an ideal world, each and every one should be as a standard practice. However, in order to do that, we need a distribution focused only in music production and mixing that has some attention.

I know a bunch of my colleagues that would convert to Linux in a heartbeat if something like that existed.

What do you think about a potential existence of a DAW? Is something that could work?

Edit 1: While with DAW we usually mean the actual software, in some cases the use of this word served for the machine itself. So yes, there are available DAWs as programs. But I hardly know any colleague of mine using Linux as their main solution.

Edit 2: As you would probably see me mention in other comments, this is a call to arms for a native solution that would be the next standard in audio production. Not looking to convert at something I can't reliably install everything and start working from day 1 and have every plugin available like I do with windows. I know that doesn't exist, that's why this post does.

Edit 3: Due to the artistic nature of this, there is a blurry line, someone would use it for fun and exploration and the other to meet deadlines from clients. In second case, we need something hassle free and reliable, all those workarounds sound great but what is important is for all developers start to focus on Linux formats as they do for other two platforms.

Edit 3: You have very lovely and welcoming community, I ve learned a lot today in here. Thank you.

TL;DR What do you think is the best way to turn an old laptop into a typewriter

Hello all,

There are devices popping up that are purpose-built for distraction-free writing. Think digital typewriter. The idea is that if you have a physical device you would be more focused and have a more enjoyable writing experience. A well known example is the Freewrite https://getfreewrite.com/. There is actually a whole subreddit over at r/writerDeck .

Now, these devices get very expensive and often have tiny LCD or eink screens.

That got me thinking. How hard would it be to make a distribution for distraction-free writing? Something that would boot into a specialized full-screen software and allow for easy sharing of the text files out of the device? This way we could repurpose old corporate laptops and get larger screens and decent keyboards.

I have software development and linux experience but I have no idea how I would start writing up a distro. I thought you guys might have some leads.

Thanks!

EDIT: I appreciate that this seems too easy to justify a full distro. The reason I mentioned creating a distro is that I'm looking for specific configurations to remove as much frictions as possible:

• Boot directly into the text editor
• Auto login
• Ideally, one-button bluetooth share or one-button google drive sync, something to get files out of the device. I'm not sure if I want wi-fi or not yet.
• The Alphasmart neo has a feature where buttons f1-12 are shortcuts to files, where you get back to the file where you had left it. Then you can "open" a file by assigning it to one of the 12 slots.
• Preserve the feeling that the device is a typewriter by avoiding showing a full desktop environment

EDIT2: What I'm now thinking as the best option to turn an old laptop into a typewriter is

• NixOS distribution, with a typewriter set of configuration files
• Probably have it boot into Emacs and use Emacs-lisp to make more specific customizations (Wordstar keybindings, one keypress file share, etc)

So yeah, no new distro to worry about!