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…

the simplest answer would be: just try them all by yourself and see which one fits. Try only the popular ones btw, otherwise you’d have a hard time finding supports.

Word of advice: dont mind the aesthetics, but pay attention to stuff like package managers / packages and community. Here is what I meant:

• Unless you have special flavor from a distro like XFCE from Manjaro, any Linux distro can be made pretty. I can have Debian 12 on one computer and something like Arch on another, and I can still make both look exactly the same. So dont choose a distro just because it looks pretty, you can do that with any of them.

• Packages and package managers are so important, those are how you get software on Linux. Debian has a lot of softwares in its repos. Arch’s main repos do not have as much, but its AUR repos allow a lot of softwares to be installed.

Do you like apt, the manager for Ubuntu/Debian? Or do you prefer dnf, the manager for Fedora and RHEL? Package managers are more of a style really. I like Fedora’s dnf but Arch’s pacman is way faster.

• Community is also important. You dont want to pick a distro where only a handful of ppl use it. It would be very difficult to get supports. Ubuntu / Mint / Debians are so popular that you can get answers from any forum.

did you end up switch everything to the 2.5 ssd?

oh LibreOffice works great for me in general. Only for some documents with macros that were created in MS Office, I have problems running them. Eg: I once received a MS Word document that has some preprogrammed drop down list - so you click to extend the list and choose your items. The document opens fine, but I couldnt get the drop down feature to work. For Excel, documents with lots of VBA codes, I need to go in and do some manual changes.

In general, for 99% of the tasks, LibreOffice is fine. But it is that 1% which makes me still open up my Windows VM for MS Office.

After their shenanigan with subscription only models, we still see MS Office being used a lot. It shows how strong MS grips on the Office area is.

You are correct that 365 is used for most people. I used to use it too…For me, I prefer to be able to access stuff whenever I want. I live in an area with very shitty internet (both Wifi and 4G). Once, a client and I had to wait 5 minutes because Office Online takes too long to load up a spreadsheet. Offline for me is just a peace of mind.

LibreOffice better step up their games and make their office suites better. Outside of very niche and specialized applications like CAD or video editor, the average Joe will just need a good office suite to do stuff.

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 [email protected] and [email protected] 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.

try Vivaldi.

interesting, so you just back up your ~/.password-store directory? You use the same thing on Android or something else?/

I am using KeePass, it generates password and also TOTP. Works fine but I want to switch to something more Linuxy. Keepass is great but you really depend on a 3rd party.