Hello,

I bought a razer blade 15 laptop a while ago, and world like to install Linux on it, mostly to play games. So, ideally I'd like a distro that can make the most use of the hardware and let me play the most games, while being the easiest to use and lowest maintenance possible. Any recommendation?

Hi there, was thinking around of the best place to post this. Initially I thought maybe the Dovecot mailing list but I'm not sure if this is a Dovecot issue or if the issue lies with Postfix, so I figured maybe a more general Linux community. If people have suggestions about where I could post this that may have more people see it who are able/willing to help, I would also appreciate that.

I apologise, this post will probably be quite long, so I really do appreciate if anyone takes the time to read it and give advice.

Anyway, I was following this tutorial to set up a mail server with Postfix and Dovecot. The tutorial is for Ubuntu but I am using an Alpine Linux server, however the tutorial mostly concerns configuring Postfix and Dovecot which is distro-independent.

Deviations from the tutorial

I followed the tutorial with the exceptions of the following (deviations listed in order of the part of the tutorial they deviated from, so hopefully this is easy to follow linearly):

My server's hostname is domain.com not mail.domain.com (mail.domain.com is what my MX record points to), but this shouldn't really matter as I configured postfix with:

myhostname=mail.domain.com
mydomain=domain.com

I installed packages with apk not apt obviously, and installed Postfix with doas apk add postfix.

I didn't get the ncurses Postfix configuration popup when I installed or started Postfix.

Alpine doesn't auto-start the Postfix service, so I did

doas rc-update add postfix default
doas rc-service postfix start

I used doas apk add mailutils --update-cache --repository https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/edge/testing/ to install and test the mail program.

I didn't increase attachment size limit.

Alpine doesn't seem to have a dovecot-imapd package, so I just installed dovecot and dovecot-lmtpd.

When configuring /etc/dovecot/conf.d/15-mailboxes.conf, I also set Drafts, Junk, and Sent Messages to auto-create as well as Trash.

I started the dovecot service the same way I did postfix above.

What works

I can send mail with sendmail and GNU mailutils mail. The following works:

echo "test email" | sendmail [email protected]

And

mail -a FROM:[email protected] [email protected]

(where domain.com is my Postfix mail server, and [email protected] is my existing email address with an external provider)

The above results in me receiving the email in my spam folder at [email protected] from [email protected], email all appears normal to me.

The issue

I've noticed two problems which may be related.

Can't log into Thunderbird

Firstly, I can't log into Thunderbird. I get the following error:

(Transcription: Unable to log in at server. Probably wrong configuration, username or password.)

To log in, I am entering my email address at [email protected], where user is my UNIX user (which is part of the mail group), and domain.com is my domain. I entered my password as my user account's password.

Thunderbird seems to recognise my mail server as it auto configured to the following:

INCOMING: IMAP, hostname mail.domain.com, port 993, SSL/TLS, normal password, username user (i.e. without the @domain.com)

OUTGOING: hostname mail.domain.com, port 465, SSL/TLS, normal password, username user

I have also tried the same configuration with STARTTLS and ports 143 and 587, to the same error.

Can't receive mail

I've also tried to send myself emails from my other email addresses. I've tried two of my external email addresses so far. My email clients say they've sent the emails and they appear in my Sent folder, however my Protonmail has sent me some emails today from their mailer daemon complaining that Your email could not be delivered for more than 12 hour(s).:

<[email protected]>: host domain.com[MY IP] said: 454 4.7.1
    <[email protected]>: Relay access denied (in reply to RCPT TO command)

I've checked /var/log/messages (which is the Alpine Linux syslog) and found the following, which I don't know how to interpret:

Nov  2 17:57:03 domain mail.info postfix/smtpd[28188]: connect from mail-41103.protonmail.ch[185.70.41.103]
Nov  2 17:57:03 domain mail.info postfix/smtpd[28188]: Anonymous TLS connection established from mail-41103.protonmail.ch[185.70.41.103]: TLSv1.3 with cipher TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 (256/256 bits) key-exchange X25519 server-signature ECDSA (prime256v1)
Nov  2 17:57:04 domain mail.info postfix/smtpd[28188]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from mail-41103.protonmail.ch[185.70.41.103]: 454 4.7.1 <[email protected]>: Relay access denied; from=<[email protected]> to=<[email protected]> proto=ESMTP helo=<mail-41103.protonmail.ch>
Nov  2 17:57:04 domain mail.info postfix/smtpd[28188]: disconnect from mail-41103.protonmail.ch[185.70.41.103] ehlo=2 starttls=1 mail=1 rcpt=0/1 data=0/1 rset=1 quit=1 commands=6/8

I have dovecot configured to use the maildir format (or at least I think I do; I followed the tutorial to set it up to use maildir) but I don't see anything in my ~/Maildir directory.

Running GNU mail results in the output:

Cannot open mailbox /var/mail/user: No such file or directory
No mail for user

My configuration

Output of postconf -n:

command_directory = /usr/sbin
compatibility_level = 3.9
daemon_directory = /usr/libexec/postfix
data_directory = /var/lib/postfix
debug_peer_level = 2
debugger_command = PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin ddd $daemon_directory/$process_name $process_id & sleep 5
home_mailbox = Maildir/
html_directory = no
inet_protocols = ipv4
mail_owner = postfix
mailbox_size_limit = 0
mailbox_transport = lmtp:unix:private/dovecot-lmtp
mailq_path = /usr/bin/mailq
manpage_directory = /usr/share/man
meta_directory = /etc/postfix
mydomain = domain.com
myhostname = mail.domain.com
myorigin = $mydomain
newaliases_path = /usr/bin/newaliases
queue_directory = /var/spool/postfix
readme_directory = /usr/share/doc/postfix/readme
sample_directory = /etc/postfix
sendmail_path = /usr/sbin/sendmail
setgid_group = postdrop
shlib_directory = /usr/lib/postfix
smtp_header_checks = regexp:/etc/postfix/smtp_header_checks
smtp_tls_loglevel = 1
smtp_tls_mandatory_protocols = !SSLv2, !SSLv3, !TLSv1, !TLSv1.1
smtp_tls_protocols = !SSLv2, !SSLv3, !TLSv1, !TLSv1.1
smtp_tls_security_level = may
smtp_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtp_scache
smtpd_tls_cert_file = /etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.domain.com/fullchain.pem
smtpd_tls_key_file = /etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.domain.com/privkey.pem
smtpd_tls_loglevel = 1
smtpd_tls_mandatory_protocols = !SSLv2, !SSLv3, !TLSv1, !TLSv1.1
smtpd_tls_protocols = !SSLv2, !SSLv3, !TLSv1, !TLSv1.1
smtpd_tls_security_level = may
smtpd_tls_session_cache_database = btree:${data_directory}/smtpd_scache
smtputf8_enable = no
unknown_local_recipient_reject_code = 550

Output of doveconf -n:

# 2.3.21.1 (d492236fa0): /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf
# OS: Linux 6.6.58-0-lts x86_64  
# Hostname: domain.com
auth_debug = yes
auth_mechanisms = plain login
auth_username_format = %n
auth_verbose = yes
log_path = /var/log/dovecot.log
mail_debug = yes
mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir
mail_privileged_group = mail
mbox_write_locks = fcntl
namespace inbox {
  inbox = yes
  location = 
  mailbox Drafts {
    auto = create
    special_use = \Drafts
  }
  mailbox Junk {
    auto = create
    special_use = \Junk
  }
  mailbox Sent {
    special_use = \Sent
  }
  mailbox "Sent Messages" {
    auto = create
    special_use = \Sent
  }
  mailbox Trash {
    auto = create
    special_use = \Trash
  }
  prefix = 
}
passdb {
  args = scheme=CRYPT username_format=%u /etc/dovecot/users
  driver = passwd-file
}
protocols = imap lmtp lmtp
service auth {
  unix_listener /var/spool/postfix/private/auth {
    group = postfix
    mode = 0660
    user = postfix
  }
}
service lmtp {
  unix_listener lmtp {
    group = postfix
    mode = 0600
    user = postfix
  }
}
ssl = required
ssl_cert = </etc/letsencrypt/live/mail.domain.com/fullchain.pem
ssl_key = # hidden, use -P to show it
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers = yes
userdb {
  args = username_format=%u /etc/dovecot/users
  driver = passwd-file
}

Logs

This seems to be a dovecot log of an authentication attempt.

Nov 02 18:11:11 auth: Debug: client in: AUTH    3       PLAIN   service=imap    secured=tls     session=JeHL+PEltufBIH/a        lip=<my server IP>       rip=<my home IP>      lport=993       rport=59318     local_name=mail.domain.com       resp=<hidden>
Nov 02 18:11:11 auth: Debug: passwd-file(user,<my home IP>,<JeHL+PEltufBIH/a>): Performing passdb lookup
Nov 02 18:11:11 auth: Debug: passwd-file(user,<my home IP>,<JeHL+PEltufBIH/a>): lookup: user=user file=/etc/dovecot/users
Nov 02 18:11:11 auth: Info: passwd-file(user,<my home IP>,<JeHL+PEltufBIH/a>): unknown user
Nov 02 18:11:11 auth: Debug: passwd-file(user,<my home IP>,<JeHL+PEltufBIH/a>): Finished passdb lookup
Nov 02 18:11:11 auth: Debug: auth(user,<my home IP>,<JeHL+PEltufBIH/a>): Auth request finished
Nov 02 18:11:13 auth: Debug: client passdb out: FAIL    3       user=user       [email protected]
Nov 02 18:11:13 imap-login: Debug: Ignoring unknown passdb extra field: original_user
Nov 02 18:11:13 imap-login: Info: Disconnected: Connection closed (auth failed, 3 attempts in 22 secs): user=<user>, method=PLAIN, rip=<my home IP>, lip=<my server IP>, TLS, session=<JeHL+PEltufBIH/a>

Thanks for reading this fairly long post. Do ask if I need to provide any more configs, logs, etc. Appreciate any help, thanks in advance

This is an Acer Aspire one laptop, with a 32 bit CPU and Debian 12.7. Whenever I install Linux on it, the Internet works for about one day. And when I boot it up the next day, it just stops working. This is the case for WiFi, Ethernet and USB tethering via Android.

After running networkctl it gave me this:

I can ping 8.8.8.8 in this state, but not gnu.org. I can't open websites in Firefox either.

Then I ran "sudo systemctl start systemd-networkd". The networkctl output changed but everything worked exactly as the above two images. Couldn't open websites still.

Yesterday everything was working perfectly

Edit: Thanks to @[email protected] and @[email protected] I finally have internet access on my 12-year old e-waste!

I've attached a literal screen shot of all systemd errors. It seems to be caused by kscreenlocker_greet because of a missing shared object file. The boot 9 hours ago was from a read-only snapshot, and therefore doesn't have it.

I have already tried updating with zypper dup, but that did not help.

Error as text:

PAM unable to dlopen(/usr/lib64/security/pam_pkcs11.so): /usr/lib64/security/pam_pkcs11.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

marty@Marty-PC:~/git/exllama$ pip install numpy
error: externally-managed-environment

× This environment is externally managed
╰─> To install Python packages system-wide, try apt install
    python3-xyz, where xyz is the package you are trying to
    install.
    
    If you wish to install a non-Debian-packaged Python package,
    create a virtual environment using python3 -m venv path/to/venv.
    Then use path/to/venv/bin/python and path/to/venv/bin/pip. Make
    sure you have python3-full installed.
    
    If you wish to install a non-Debian packaged Python application,
    it may be easiest to use pipx install xyz, which will manage a
    virtual environment for you. Make sure you have pipx installed.
    
    See /usr/share/doc/python3.12/README.venv for more information.

note: If you believe this is a mistake, please contact your Python installation or OS distribution provider. You can override this, at the risk of breaking your Python installation or OS, by passing --break-system-packages.
hint: See PEP 668 for the detailed specification.

I get this error every time I try install any kind of python package. So far, I always just used the --break-system-packages flag, but that seems, well, rather unsafe and breaking.

To this day, I see newly written guides, specifically for Linux, which don't point out this behaviour. They just say [...] And then install this python package with 'pip install numpy'

Is this something specific to my system, or is this a global thing?

We're kicking off our 2024 end-of-year fundraiser just in time for Halloween!

Even if the spine-tingling horrors of the long dark night of Walpurgis are mostly imaginary, the sinister threats of predatory proprietary software providers remain all too real.

Fear not! We, the KDE community, will help you, your friends, family, company, and community banish all the creepy and insidious proprietary software that haunts your computers, phones, and household appliances.

But we can't do it alone! We need you to help us fight the good fight against the tech-ghouls from beyond. Use the form to donate any amount to our fundraiser (or become a regular donor to our community) and help us keep the dark forces of proprietary software at bay.

Check link for the horror stories and fundraising progress 👍

What are some of the easiest ways for a beginner to make their system untable when they start tinkering with it?

I downloaded the AppImage file from the GitHub Repo and I did check that my USB Drive is connected which I can access it through my File Manager as well as Gnome's Disk Utility.

Oddly, when I tried to set an directory for Movies and TV-Shows in MediaElch, it acts like I hadn't plug my USB drive.

Thanks to Valve's Linux graphics team, VK_EXT_device_generated_commands is now supported by the Radeon "RADV" Vulkan driver with the upcoming Mesa 24.3 release.

Prominent RADV developer Samuel Pitoiset at Valve has landed support for VK_EXT_device_generated_commands, the multi-vendor device generated commands "DGC" implementation. Last month with Vulkan 1.3.296 the VK_EXT_device_generated_commands extension was introduced to succeed NVIDIA's vendor-prefixed DGC extension. The device generated commands extension allows for the GPU device to generate a number of commands for command buffers. VK_EXT_device_generated_commands is a very big and important addition to the Vulkan API: Valve's Mike Blumenkrantz has argued that DGC is the biggest addition to Vulkan since ray-tracing.

Hey there Linux community. I’ve been interested in Linux lately and have been considering switching to Linux Mint from windows 11. My main pc is a Surface Laptop Studio with an intel i7, 32g ram, 1 terabyte ssd, and an rtx 3050 ti gpu. I’m thinking about trying out dual booting to see how I like it, but I have some questions. 

I use my laptop for a lot of creative work, video editing, web design, music production, photography, etc. I’m not too worried about it because I’ve come across many promising FOSS alternatives, but there’s some software I’d like to ask about specifically. I ditched Adobe Premiere in favor of Davinci Resolve a while ago and I know that there’s a native Linux version of Resolve, and I’m just curious about how well that runs for the people that use it?

As far as music production goes I’m an avid user of Ableton Live. It’s been my go to for years and I know that support for it on Linux isn’t the best, if it’s even there at all. I’ve seen a few people claim they’ve gotten it working but it seems a little suspicious to me. So to anyone in the music space, what are the best Linux supported alternatives? Or, in the event I decide to switch, should I maintain my dual boot setup to just stick with Ableton?

I’m also pretty locked into the Microsoft ecosystem with OneDrive (I get a terabyte of cloud storage for free so it’s where almost all of my files are). I’m in the process of trying to setup my own cloud storage with nextcloud or something similar, but until then I’m curious if I’d be able to set up OneDrive live file syncing in my Linux environment, similar to how it works on windows? If anyone has any experience with that I’d love to hear some input.

Not something that’s absolutely necessary, but I’m just curious if the touch support of my laptop would be maintained. Since it’s a surface device it’s actually a really nice touch screen, and the pen input is great, my wife borrows it for digital drawing sometimes and loves it. I don’t use it all the time but I do occasionally and it’d be a huge plus if it still worked just as well.

I think those are pretty much the only things holding me back from fully dedicating myself to switching, so I’d really appreciate some input. Thanks!

Personally, to keep my documents like Inkscape files or LibreOffice documents separate from my code, I add a directory under my home directory called Development. There, I can do git clones to my heart's content

What do you all do?

So a few months back I asked about you guys os in c/asklemmy, so this time I wanna ask about your desktops you use on this same account.
(I use kde but plan to move to cinnamon I find kde buggy and gnome tracker3 randomly broke for no reason + themeing so yh idk if these happened to anybody)

Edit: Tumbleweed and bazzite are currently the most attractive options based on what I've learned from the comments. I will trial run those and 1 or 2 others.

I am currently on Pop OS.

I am dissatisfied with the DE/UI and I've been playing with others but half the point of this distro is it's custom UI. So I figured I would try another. I have several criteria that may narrow it down.

1. I am going to use KDE or KDE Plasma (preferred). This is the only non-negotiable criteria.

2. I will be gaming. This means I would like relatively up to date kernel and software. Rolling or semi-rolling releases are preferred.

2.5. I also work from this pc. This mainly entails using discord and Firefox though so no special requirements. I do have 4 different sized monitors with 3 different refresh rates that I use for work. Only one for gaming. One is vertical. I can tell I'm pushing x to its limits with that setup.

3. I would prefer Debian-based as that is what I'm used to and because .deb packages are so common.

4. I don't want it to be a ton of effort to set up. Pop OS worked out of the box with my Nvidia GPU and all other hardware. I am willing to put in some effort though.

5. I have been using and very much like apt and flatpak. This is not a requirement, just an observation.

6. Wayland is neat

7. Active community with lots of support to search through. Pop OS has been good for this as it's Ubuntu based and has its own great community.

Ultimately I want an easy to use desktop OS that uses some sort of KDE, supports up to date packages and drivers, supports most games and isn't a pain to maintain.

Here are some contenders that fit at least some of my requirements.

KDE Neon user edition

Opensuse tumbleweed

Kubuntu

Endeavor OS

Debian

Manjaro

Bazzite

Mint Debian edition

Right now I'm leaning toward KDE Neon, Kubuntu, or Debian (whatever the rolling release version is), but the others all have their draws. I've heard the aur is great but I have come across several applications only available in website downloads of Deb packages so I'm hesitant.

I have been using pop as my first desktop distro after Windows and I've enjoyed it a lot. I barely run into anything I can't solve with some effort and headache and not a single game I can't play. I'd like to keep it that way.

Now that that's out of the way, does anyone have suggestions? Am I looking in the wrong direction? Am I asking the wrong questions? Should I just install arch, live in the terminal, and throw away my mouse? /s

Thank you all for your advice in advance.

The 3.7.x series is primarily maintenance releases while we're working on Audacity 4.0. 3.7.0 fixes the following bugs:

• #6233, #7397, #6900 Improved Linux compatibility.
• #6702 Improved contrast in the light theme.
• #7008 MP3 exports: Renamed "Insane" to "Excessive".
• #7570, #7452 Improved non-standard character handling for cloud saving.
• #7486 Renamed "Split cut/delete" to "Cut/delete and leave gap".
• #7293 Pasting clips no longer moves clips on other tracks if "editing clips can move other clips" is enabled.
• #7312, #7382 Fixed database compacting not working properly sometimes.
• #6851 Improved startup speed on systems with many audio devices.
• #7186 Multi view: Fixed the hitbox of the x being misaligned with the visuals. (Thanks, Kurtsley)
• #7468 macOS: Fixed VST presets path.
• #7571 Adding, removing, replacing and reordering of effects now is undoable.
• #7573 Closing a project upon turning a realtime effect stack on and off doesn't crash Audacity anymore.
• #7610 Canceling a stereo track mid-operation no longer crashes Audacity.
• #7385 Importing Opus files using libopus no longer shifts the audio data.

Here's the situation: I use the Obsidian Flatpak with Plasma on openSUSE Tumbleweed. For a long time the Obsidian file picker was the Plasma version, and life was good. After an update of openSUSE and my Obsidian Flatpak, I'm now getting the Gnome file picker. Life now makes less sense.

I've confirmed that other Flatpaks are still using the Plasma file picker. I've also been investigating my xdg-desktop-portal configuration based off of what I've been reading here, but it all looks correct to me.

I can't decide whether this change was because of Obsidian, the Flatpak packaging of Obsidian, or an openSUSE change. Does anyone have tips on tracking this down?

Today I needed to do a clean install. I downloaded and installed the distro as usual choosing similar installer options as I did in the past (however I didn't install CUPS this time because idk what's up with that vulnerabilities).

After a reboot and fixing some systemd-boot freeze issues in BIOS, the system started and the GDM login prompt appeared without any issues. But there was no usual gear icon in the corner that lets you choose between Wayland, X11 and GNOME Classic modes.

I tried to log in but I got my usual Wayland issue (2/3 of the screen is black and 1/3 is artifacting). So I needed to switch to X11 to figure out if I can do anything about the issue this time.

I rebooted to fix the display issue and entered CLI mode (ctrl + alt + f2). I checked for xorg packages and they were indeed installed. However doing startx gave an error about XAuthority not being configured and launched an empty session with 3 or 4 xterm windows.

For those thinking of the 61st /usr/lib rule, I do not have an NVidia GPU so that's not the issue.

So, all of that made me think that new releases of EndeavourOS come with the stupid X11-less version of GNOME. Can I add the support myself via CLI or do I have to install an X11-only DE and use that to compile a version of GNOME with mandatory X11?

EDIT: everyone said that I should change the hardware but I figured out a fix myself. It turned out it was actually a distro issue.