There's no useful information to glean from this image other than the fact that we finally found someone who uses light mode on Discord.

Just to clarity the relationship between Red Hat, IBM, and Fedora, Fedora is only sponsored by Red Hat. They make all their own decisions, and while they receive financial support from Red Hat and Red Hat owns the Fedora trademark, their decisions and development are independent of Red Hat (and by extension IBM), with the single exception that they cannot risk violating the law (i.e. copyright infringement), else it risks Red Hat legal trouble (and Fedora would risk losing their sponsorship as a result). Red Hat benefits from Fedora's development by the community, given that Fedora is RHEL's upstream, hence why it continues to sponsor Fedora. But it isn't Red Hat that is in charge of Fedora's development, it's FESCo, which is entirely community elected, and does not stand for the interests of Red Hat, but rather for the interests of the community.

Eliminating Fedora from contention in that regard is essentially like eliminating Debian because you don't like Canonical, who makes Ubuntu, a downstream of Debian.

Add on top of that the fact that IBM and Red Hat are major contributors to the Linux kernel, and you absolutely cannot avoid connections to them while using Linux. I mean, that's quite frankly a ridiculous exclusion criteria in the context of Linux. If you're looking to avoid an operating system OWNED by Red Hat or IBM, then Fedora should not be included in that list. Neither of them have any say or pull in the development of Fedora, which is a completely community-driven project (no, owning the trademark doesn't change that fact; if Red Hat tried to take over, the Fedora community would simply fork the project, rebrand, and continue on their own). Besides, Red Hat has no interest in controlling Fedora, because it doesn't benefit them. Their only interest is in enterprise applications, which is not a good use case for Fedora. The only operating systems Red Hat actually has any control over are RHEL, CentOS, and any derivatives of those operating systems like Rocky Linux, Oracle Linux, and such (though Red Hat's control over derivatives was only the result of those projects being downstream, not actual ownership).

So with that in mind, I'd recommend the Fedora KDE spin if you want a normal, stable, snap-free, no DIY required distro with KDE, or if you want the immutable version, Fedora Kinoite is what you'd be looking for. And Fedora has the major advantage over Debian-based distros of actually receiving package and kernel updates regularly, so you can stay up to date and enjoy new features, all while maintaining stability.

Fedora Kinoite is absolutely the best immutable distro fitting your criteria. Anything else will have a much smaller community and less support as a result. rpm-ostree has great documentation, and all of the Fedora Atomic Spins have a huge userbase available in case you ever have questions.

Your number is on a list of real numbers with real identities associated with them that was sold to them. Data brokers sell this information daily. They already know your number is real, but in order to comply with the law, they have to provide you with a legitimate option to opt out, so you will actually stop receiving correspondence from them if you ask them to stop (it is legally required). If not, they could be subject to a fine, but you'd obviously have to file a complaint with the relevant regulatory body for that.

If you do not attempt to opt out, they cannot be fined for spam if this is part of a legitimate donation campaign. If you don't reply, they will continue sending messages to you in the future. It costs them almost nothing to do, so even if they didn't know your number was real, they would do it anyway. Most of the people who donate from these messages don't reply through text message anyway. And if this were an actual scam, then there is nothing they gain from receiving a text back so long as you do not open their link. But again, in order for legal action to be taken (since these political reach outs are legal and not spam so long as there is an option to opt out), you must first try to opt out.

EDIT: Feel free to block the number after opting out. If they are legitimate (though the name is really fishy), then opting out will remove your number from all of their solicitors' lists, so you won't get texts or calls from different numbers working for the same campaign. Again, replying doesn't give them anything even if it is a scam, as your number was obtained from a real list sold to them by a data broker; they already know the number is in service. Just don't click the link in the text, and don't reply with anything other than stop.

SUID stands for Set User ID. An SUID binary is a file that is always run with the UID of the owner user (almost always root). Note that this does not require that the user running them has root permissions, the UID is always changed. For instance, the ping command needs to set up network sockets, which requires root permissions, but is also often used by non-root users to check their network connections. Instead of having to sudo ping, any normal user is able to just run ping, as it uses SUID to run as the root user. sudo and doas also require functions that necessitate them running as root, and so if you can find out how to exploit these commands to run some arbitrary code without having to authenticate (since authentication happens after the binary has started running), there is a potential for vulnerabilities. Specifically, there is the privilege escalation, which is one of the most severe types of vulnerabilities.

run0 starts using systemd-run, which does not use SUID. Instead, it runs with the permissions of the current user, and then authenticates to the root user after the binary has already started to run. systemd-run contacts polkit for authentication, and if it succeeds, it creates a root PTY (pseudo-terminal/virtual terminal), and sends information between your session and the root PTY. So this means that in order to achieve privilege escalation with run0 as root, you have to actually authenticate first, removing the "before authentication" attack surface of sudo and doas.

TL;DR SUID binaries will always run as the owner (usually root), even before any form of authentication. run0 will start with the permissions of the current user, and then authenticate before running anything with root permissions.

The linked article does a great job explaining the process of creating a theme assuming you have the SVG files. If you are asking how to create SVG files, then just use any vector editor (like Inkscape, for instance). You can find plenty of tutorials on how to create vectors through online video tutorials.

Well, since doas has a Linux implementation, stealing that name would cause lots of issues to users who already use it or want to use doas instead of run0. This will be a default part of systemd; not a new package. The reason it's called run0 is because it's just a symbolic link to systemd-run, and instead of executing as an SUID binary, like sudo or doas, it runs using the current user's UID.

Chromium-based browsers have inherently weaker extensions due to Manifest v3 and many other targeted attacks on adblockers. If you want a browser that works far better and provides a much higher level of privacy, use Mullvad Browser (worked on in collaboration with the Tor Browser, just without Tor integration) or LibreWolf. Both are Firefox forks with Firefox telemetry removed and anti-fingerprinting measures. You don't need and absolutely should not install any extensions beyond the default installed in those 2 browsers (except perhaps a password manager), as that will dramatically damage the fingerprinting protection they provide. Both will have a much higher level of protection than you could ever realistically expect from any Chromium-based Browser.

From the article, it seems that there will be a DRM-free version available on the game's website for Linux (and that will be the only place to get the Linux native package). So no need to go through Epic. Plus, most Epic exclusives eventually end up on Steam anyway, it's just a matter of time.

Excluding Fedora because it's "too close to RH" doesn't make any sense at all. Fedora is not controlled by Red Hat, and Red Hat has no interest in a consumer desktop platform that they can't sell. Fedora's development is managed by FESCo, a community elected board that represents the interests of the community. They are kept intentionally separate from Red Hat's development, and don't tailor their development to Red Hat's wants or needs (in fact they often do the opposite, as Fedora pushes for change in the way things are done, not stability, as can be seen by the exclusion of X11 from Fedora 40, for example). That stands in direct contradiction with RHEL's goals. The features that are pushed by Red Hat developers would not be approved if they stood against the wants of the community, so anything Red Hat does contribute benefits the community as well. Red Hat's entire business is in enterprise solutions, as their business model relies on them selling support for their software. There is exactly $0 in potential revenue from Red Hat trying to take over Fedora, it just doesn't make sense. They can't sell anything, and since Red Hat doesn't employ all of the thousands of active contributors, such a takeover would simply result in a new fork. In fact, it would be against their interests, as Red Hat actively benefits from the developments of the community. Taking over control of the project would lose them all of the constant volunteer work put in by the community, which costs far less for them to sponsor than it would to employ a team a fraction of the size on salary. I've discussed this topic at length many times before, so I'll just link to a few comments that explain the situation in more detail (including how the project is funded, managed, and separated from Red Hat).

https://lemmy.world/comment/7490965

https://lemmy.world/comment/7494803

The best fit for your criteria is Fedora. If you want uBlue spins, you're still getting Fedora, just a more opinionated version. All of the major development of uBlue's images comes from Fedora though, as they don't maintain their own distro, they just repackage Fedora.

sudo is not a fairly simple program. Last I checked, it had ~177k lines of code. It provides functionality far beyond what is needed of an average user. doas is a simpler alternative (also using SUID) at ~3k lines of code. It comes from OpenBSD. There is absolutely a problem when it comes to SUID binaries. If you can find a way to exploit the permissions given at the start of the SUID binary before user authentication occurs (since the UID is set before the binary runs), you have yourself a full privilege escalation vulnerability. systemd is very well integrated with the distros that use it, being the first process to run after the kernel is initialized. There will never be a point at which systemd is not functioning, but the rest of your system is perfectly fine. It is an absolutely necessary part of the system (assuming your distro uses it), and if it goes down, you have to restart your system. As such, I don't see any validity to the statement "you want to always work, even (especially!) when other things get borked". What exactly do you see as being an issue with run0? What specific part of its implementation do you seem to have a problem with? It's just a symlink to systemd-run, which is already very well tested and has been around for a long time. It's also far simpler than sudo, and removes the attack surface of running an SUID binary of its size. What "points of failure" do you see here, exactly?

I'm also going to echo the sea of comments praising KDE support on Fedora. I just switched to Kinoite/Fedora Atomic KDE (for the Fedora 40 release) after using Fedora Workstation for about 5 years, and I've loved the experience. My only gripes have been from adjusting to an atomic distro, and have had nothing to do with KDE implementation. It seems that Fedora works very well with KDE, though I suppose I don't have a whole lot of experience with other distros using KDE.

If you want to use KDE with a standard desktop experience, just use the KDE spin (the standard mutable version). If you're interested in atomic distros (not trying to convert you, it's very much a personal preference), then they have the atomic KDE spin as well. I don't think you'll be missing anything by using KDE on Fedora, and unless you wanted to experiment with GNOME, there's no reason to really switch. Workstation and the KDE spin are both maintained at about the same level.

I generally have 2 recommendations for beginners who don't want something specific, one of which is a community favorite, the other is my own favorite.

The community generally recommends Linux Mint for new users. It's based an Ubuntu, so it had a lot of great support, but it has the enshittification of Ubuntu (snaps, tracking, pro subscription ads, etc.) removed. It's a great, simple distro for beginners that generally works all around without tweaking. It's basically the #1 recommendation for new users, and I gladly support that recommendation.

My personal favorite recommendation is Fedora, through I understand why there may be frustrations for those with Nvidia graphics cards who need to install their drivers. The process to do it on Fedora isn't very complex, and can be looked up easily, but new users tend to feel intimidated by the command line, and I must admit that the installation of Nvidia drivers and media codec are more difficult than something like Linux Mint (for Fedora, this is a copyright issue, since their main sponsor is Red Hat, a private company). In every other area, I'd say Fedora is great for beginners, and provides a great way for users to get new features quickly without having to worry about any of the instabilities or quirks of something like Arch.

You couldn't go wrong with either, but you're certainly going to see more recommendations for Linux Mint in general (especially on Nvidia hardware).

Just stay away from Manjaro, Gentoo, and Void (there's a long list of complex distros, but it really isn't going to help to list them all). Gentoo and Void have their place, but are not a great place for a beginner to start. Manjaro simply has no place, just avoid it like the plague.

This is a discussion about Docker, which is a complex terminal-based containerization system. This is not a program that is typically used by the average user. Docker's complexity does not imply that Linux requires this kind of set up to use as a normal desktop. This is usually server software. Docker is also available on Windows and MacOS, and is partnered with Microsoft (you know, the company that makes Windows? The desktop OS with the highest market share?). Are you going to complain about how Windows will never reach mass adoption because users are able to install complex tools that require a steep learning curve to use? You can install Docker on Windows and use the same commands and configs, so do you believe that Windows suffers this same problem?

Before you point out the start of that comment with the "Linux mentality" stuff, while some of that is certainly true, you can now do everything an average user needs to do in an intuitive GUI, just like Windows (better in many cases, actually). Half the listed commands (making directories and files) can be done in the file manager just like Windows, normal apps can be managed in app stores, and the rest of it is docker specific, which is (again), server-oriented software. I'm not a fan of their mentality about how things work in Linux, because it's very much an old mentality that doesn't account for the immense amount of change that has happened in the past decade to make Linux more accessible.

I don't understand why people come to the Linux communities to complain that Linux is "too hard" or "too complex" to be usable. If you don't have an actual interest in Linux, find another community. If you want a simple experience, use a simple distro that's meant to be easy to use, and use software that is easy to use.

The flowchart is as follows:

LibreOffice or OnlyOffice for desktop apps (no, they are not Microsoft apps, but yes they use Microsoft formats and can edit and save Microsoft documents/spreadsheets/etc). OnlyOffice is the closest of the two to the Windows experience.

If you really aren't open to using alternative software (which is strange given that you're using Linux), then the web apps exist. I've heard they're really close to the actual desktop suite, though I don't have any interest in ever using them as we have very good free and open source alternatives available (see above).

If the web apps don't cut it for you, then you can run the official apps in a VM, or maybe through WINE. Here's the WINE DB page for Microsoft Office, which lists various Office versions and their level of compatibility through WINE.

Copilot will likely not be possible to secure on Linux in a standalone desktop app (unless someone somewhere hacked something together through Electron to use a web version). Another user said that Copilot is available inside Microsoft Edge, so I suppose you could install that, though I'd highly discourage that. Reliance on LLMs is quite frankly a plague to society, and often feeds incorrect, biased, or purely fabricated responses, as LLMs merely attempt to predict what word is most likely to occur next based on a set of training data, none of which was vetted for accuracy, racism, zionism, sexism, etc. LLMs like copilot do not have any form of intelligence, and do not understand what they are saying. I highly recommend you just use a search engine in your browser, because it'll feed you the same info all the LLMs were trained on anyway.

OneDrive recently received native support in GNOME, so I think you should be able to access it in your settings under accounts/connected services (whatever GNOME calls it nowadays)? I've never tried to use it, so other people will know better than I will there, but it should be possible to use.

It seems you've chosen a DE that is not particularly well-suited to this task. Cinnamon is meant to be simplistic, and offer an easy transition from Windows with its Windows-like layout. It is purposefully less customizable than many other DEs. I second the recommendation of KDE Plasma, as this is actually available as a shortcut without any extensions, but if you wish to customize your DE deeply like this, KDE is incredibly customizable. You can do essentially anything you want in it and get it to look however you want.

Since you said that you're trying out Mint, now would be a good time to switch distro so you don't get attached to something that doesn't suit your needs. Switching desktop environments can cause lots of issues, so it's often best to just pick a distro with the DE you want. My personal recommendation is Fedora's KDE spin (though there are discussions of Fedora's default workstation switching to KDE in the future). If you're invested into Debian, then I don't really have any experience with Debian-based KDE distros, but I'm sure someone else could recommend you something. To be clear, the benefit of recommending Mint as a starter distro has gradually diminished as other distros have become more user-friendly. Fedora is a perfectly fine distro for someone new to desktop Linux (especially since you're already experienced on the command line); you'll just have to look up how to install Nvidia drivers if you have an Nvidia graphics card. AMD commits their driver to the Linux kernel, so no need to do anything if you have an AMD card. Try out some distros in a VM before you commit to anything though; it's much less commitment than installing so it's far easier to test distros out and see what best suits you.

TL;DR: Install Fedora from a liveUSB, as recommended in all the official documents and guides. If you have a secure boot issue, it's likely because you installed from a VM. VMs run in BIOS mode by default, so the Fedora installer would install to your SSD without UEFI secure boot compatibility.

It seems like you may be overcomplicating things here. Why install to your SSD from a VM? Why not just make a liveUSB, boot into that, and then install to the SSD? That's the recommended install method, and is far less error prone. The UEFI error you linked is resolved in Fedora 40 (which releases on the 23rd), but I highly doubt that was your issue, it seems like quite the long shot. Additionally, you do not need a swap partition (swapfiles have been standard for a long time), and honestly I'd just recommend you stick to the default partitioning scheme if you aren't already comfortable in Linux. Less room for error that way.

If you believe secure boot to be an issue (like you seem to based on the issue you linked), then you should know that VMs all run in BIOS mode by default, not UEFI, so installing from a VM will not install with UEFI secure boot compatibility (hence why you should use the recommended method of booting from a liveUSB). This is why I don't believe the issue you linked is related, as if secure boot were the problem, than the issue is the fact that you're installing from a VM, since the VM will only know that it was booted in BIOS mode and do a BIOS mode install with no UEFI secure boot compatibility.

Tails is meant to boot from a USB drive, it is not meant to be installed on your system, so I'm not sure why you wanted to partition for it. I'm not even sure that it has an installer, because all the official documents and guides only talk about using a liveUSB (how it's intended to be used).

I'm a bit confused why you chose to go this route to installing Fedora, as I've never seen a guide or any official documentation recommend a setup like this. Any guide you find online should tell you to use a liveUSB for installation, and that's by far the easiest way. So I don't quite understand the complaint about how "difficult" Linux is to install for the average user when you aren't following any official way to install it. The "hoops" you jumped through all seem to be self-imposed. If you are actually experiencing a hardware-related issue, then the next step would be to try a different distro, but you need to try an official installation method before that, because that's most likely your issue. Again, if secure boot is the issue, then you will experience the same thing from any other distro if you try to install it from a VM. That simply won't work.

Fedora's official documentation has you go to this page to download the Fedora Media Writer for Windows (an alternative to Rufus/Ventoy that will automatically download the Fedora ISO for you). You run that .exe in Windows with a USB flash drive plugged in, and it's self-explanatory. Then you boot into the liveUSB you created (you may have to go into your BIOS and enable USB booting), and follow the installer steps. I suggest you wait until Fedora 40 releases on Tuesday, as it's less than a week away. If by some long shot that issue you linked was in any way related, it is fixed in Fedora 40. No need to rush things. Just follow the official installation instructions, don't go off on your own, and see if it works. If it doesn't, you have a hardware issue and you can try to install something like Debian to see if it has the same hardware issues.

You came into this with hostility, insulting the commenter instead of nicely asking how to do what they said you can do, and then you have the audacity to complain that they answered your question? Sorry, but it's very clear that you're the problem here. If you're going to complain that Linux users assume you know something when they answer, and then continue to complain when they provide clarification upon realizing they missed some information you needed to know after you complain to them about assuming you know what they're talking about, then the problem here is not the Linux users, and I'm not sure why you're in this community. This goes for every aspect of life, but you can always just politely ask for clarification like a normal person, instead of acting like a child throwing a tantrum. Most people will be conservative with their answers as to not insult you by assuming you don't know anything and bloating the comments with detailed instructions that could be unnecessary. Just ask for clarification.

If your view of Linux users is so negative, then why are you here? Why are you asking us for help? Why are you using Linux in the first place if you have such disdain for it? It makes no sense to me why you are being so hostile to people who are simply trying to help you.

If you're referring to ROCm, that's completely open source (AMD's CUDA competitor). I didn't notice anything proprietary mentioned in the linked article. Unless I'm missing something, in which case, please do let me know.

I replied about getting the updated kernel on Bazzite on another one of your comments, but I want to clarify that this is not only a bug for those that have resizable bar and 4g decoding as BIOS options, and it does not always happen on game start. I just want to reinforce that this is very likely the exact issue you are experiencing, and it is patched in kernel version 6.9. The only reason you don't see the popup from the linked issue is because that is a check that was added in 6.9rc-5 to validate hardware capabilities; the root issue underneath has been present since 6.6.30, but only results in a crash with no error dialog. This particular kernel bug happens when the CPU runs out of VRAM space that is accessible to it, and tries to move data to other parts of VRAM (with the help of the GPU) to make space in the section visible to the CPU. Since resizable bar makes all VRAM visible to the CPU, that's why it fixes the issue for some, but that is not the root cause of the problem. There is an off by one error discussed in the kernel bug thread that was linked that incorrectly handles the VRAM swapping and only became an issue after a check was written to validate the hardware capabilities (which fails due to the off by one error). This can happen after some time playing the game, after the CPU-accessible part of VRAM is filled up, however long that takes.

This will be fixed in a few weeks when the 6.9 kernel is pushed to the Fedora repos, or you could compile and install the 6.9 kernel using my instructions on your other comment. Or you could continue to use Mint until the kernel is updated, whatever works for you. Other than this one obscure kernel bug, Bazzite will generally be the much better option for gaming as far as performance and user experience goes. Mint follows the Debian/Ubuntu update cycle, so its kernels are old and without many enhancements to gaming that exist in the newer versions of the kernel present in Bazzite and Fedora. Of course, you can choose whatever distro you'd like, I just wanted to provide a method for you to switch back to Bazzite if you prefer it (and explain what the issue is and how to fix it).

This is not very common knowledge, but it is no longer recommended to press S or U before B for SysRq. The official documentation of sysrq has stopped recommending this practice, as it may be harmful to modern filesystems. Writing to a storage device while the kernel is in a bad state has the potential to cause corruption, and modern journaling filesystems like EXT4 and BTRFS are designed to survive crashes like this with minimal (or no) corruption. Instead, you'll likely want to use Alt+SysRq+REIB (and make sure you are waiting multiple seconds between each keypress, as they do not complete instantly!).

You may instead try to kill the most memory intensive non-vital process with Alt+SysRq+RF, which may stop you from crashing to begin with (this works especially well for memory leaks). SysRq+F will invoke the oom (out of memory) killer, which will kill the most memory intensive non-vital process without causing a kernel panic.

If you need to restart, the most ideal situation is to enter a TTY and cleanly reboot, in which case you can do Alt+SysRq+R to grab control from the display manager, then Ctl+Alt+F3 or Ctl+Alt+F4 (I believe most distros have the first login session run on the TTY accessible from Ctl+Alt+F2) to switch to another TTY. You can then log in and do sudo systemctl reboot if your computer is still responsive. You may need to kill some processes before your system becomes responsive enough to log in on a TTY, which is where Alt+SysRq+F is useful, but in extreme situations it may require Alt+SysRq+EIB.

So a basic order of steps to try may look like:

1. Try Alt+SysRq+RF and wait a few seconds to see if your system starts responding. If not, you can either try it another time or two, or move on to 2.
2. See if you can switch to a TTY with Ctl+Alt+F3. If so, try to log in and sudo systemctl reboot. Else move onto 3.
3. If you are in a TTY, switch back to the main login with Ctl+Alt+F2. Then do Alt+SysRq+REIB.

In the spirit of other users giving mnemonic devices, you could remember REIB with Reboot Even If Broken, or the oom killer RF with Resolve Freeze (someone else can probably think of something better for RF; I'm not great at making mnemonic devices).

TL;DR: There are SysRq combinations that are less prone to damage/corruption than Alt+SysRq+REISUB, so use the above flowchart, or just remove the S and U for Alt+SysRq+REIB (if you don't want to troubleshoot first) for less chance of filesystem corruption from a bad kernel. You can often recover the system without having to hard reset (Alt+SysRq+B). And ALWAYS wait between SysRq keys, as they do not finish instantly.