#Ubuntu Studio

[fanly]

Ubuntu Studio，为媒体内容创作者而设计的Linux操作系统 - 泪雪网

Ubuntu Studio是专为创意专业人士设计的Linux发行版，基于Ubuntu构建。预装一系列多媒体制作工具，涵盖音频、视频、图形设计和摄影等领域，。特色功能包括低延迟内核优化，适合实时音频处理，以及强大的软件套件，如Ardour、Blender和GIMP，为用户提供��面的创作环境。

[linuxlife]

Linux Life Episode 84

Hello everybody and welcome back to Linux Life I admit its been a little while since I made an entry which was informing you of the death of Mangelwurzel and entry of the new Dell Inspiron 3525 I am currently using to type this article on.

Reason its been so long was I actually went back to Windows (stop spitting at back please it’s not pretty) because I wanted to play Blur and a few other games. Well I did and in that time I also tried several ways to have a Linux installation in some form of VM.

So first I used Virtualbox which is a Type 2 Hypervisor basically what that means is everything is emulated in its own little sandbox and all the hardware is virtual. I did manage to get Ubuntu Studio running but to say it was rough would be an understatement.

Virtualbox does not like KDE to say the least and it was painful to run. Also the networking was slow. Sure I could have used normal Ubuntu to see if GNOME was faster but for all I have tried it many times I really don’t like GNOME. Everything needs extensions and the interface is horrible.

Finding apps requires typing in a search because of that stupid Mac Launchpad icon design. I really detest it. I’m sure if you were using a touchscreen then it makes sense but most laptops definitely are not.

Anyway after far too many hours wasted with that I moved on to try Hyper V which is a Type 1 Hypervisor which allows much more connection to base metal components... it lets you use your actual graphics card, the hard drive can be accessed better and you have access to USB and the likes which makes it much better.

Now at the time I was using Windows 11 Home as that’s what came pre-installed on the Dell. So I had to download Hyper V as it wasn’t there by default. So first I try Ubuntu as Canonical have an agreement with Microsoft due to WSL.

Sure enough it installed and was pretty fluid but it had no sound. There was an enhanced mode which refused to work as to do so it needed RDS (Remote Desktop Support) which also prevented sound from working (Huh ?).

To get RDS you need Windows 11 Pro which Microsoft informed me if I wanted a key would be £119. Hmmm not happy obliterated Ubuntu VM. Went web-side got a Windows 11 Pro for £1.67 as it was OEM key. They key would have been £3.35 but I found a 50% off code.

After a bit of fiddling I got Windows 11 Home to go to Pro using a key to switch it then once it did that registered the new OEM key and it worked and guess what I have access to Remote Desktop Services.

So as I felt that Hyper V could cope I now tried installing EndeavourOS which installed without a single hitch. I admit the network was slow but a million times quicker than Virtualbox.

It had no issues with KDE whatsoever but once again no sound. I installed several Hyper V tools and things from the AUR. Even changed out pipewire back to pulseaudio but no matter what I did, sod all worked. RDS couldn’t see the VM even including doing the various Powershell tips.

Bugger all, now sure I could have run Endeavour without sound but I had come this far damn it. OK deleted VM. OK I now have Win 11 Pro so lets try the Ubuntu stuff again.

OK now enhanced mode shows a dialogue and when I log in screen goes black and bugger all happens. Click off enhanced mode and Ubuntu is working. Enhanced mode just black. Setup Ubuntu. reboot now enhanced mode doesn’t come up and even the VM crashes now.

This wasted too many hours and days of messing around. I even got the RDS side running but when I tried to Remotely Access using RDS it crashed. What a complete waste of bloody time.

I even tried running a Ubuntu Studio VM using VMWare Player 17. It didn’t work.

I doing think about setting up a KVM version of QEMU to run a Linux installation but guess what if you want sound on QEMU you need to get a specific version called the Screamer and it won’t let you use KVM setup meaning it wouldn’t allow you to install the Linux.

By this point I just gave up I honestly don’t care what type of Hypervisor it is I am obviously too thick to get things running as they should and I gave up.

I almost tried Proxmox and XCP-NG but upon seeing what they entailed just gave up.

After all that I thought I would leave alone and just use Windows. Then everyone started informing my Facebook had been cloned, well lets just say that didn’t happen when I had Linux.

The internet under Windows just ran slower than when I had Linux. Watching YouTube stalled regularly, downloads failed due to time out and my frustration levels were getting to breaking point.

I tried to dual boot Linux as I found out how to shrink the partition in Windows and use it for Linux installation. So tried EndeavourOS but because of the Secure boot it wouldn’t let the system install.

However for some reason Fedora will install if Secure boot is still on. So I installed Fedora Beta 40 because I wanted to try the new KDE Plasma 6. Now I know it’s beta software so not to have many expectations but most of the software I use was not in the store nor could I find the appropriate dnf installer.

However Fedora now would boot but my Windows 11 wouldn’t the partition was there but it didn’t add it to the menu so now I could load Fedora but Windows wouldn’t load.

Tried OS Prober, Grub Customizer, no matter what I did could not get the Windows 11 partition to boot or get it in the options

Pissed off now I finally turned off Secure boot. Wiped the whole hard drive and installed EndeavourOS Galileo Neo (the latest version) and set up the Dell with KDE.

It now is running on KDE 6 Plasma 6.0.2 running Wayland. It is running seamlessly, the internet is quicker. No issues with YouTube. Updating fine. When I tried KDE 5 Plasma Wayland, Steam and several other programs stopped working.

Well Steam is working fine using XWayland (a Wayland to X11 bridge) and there is a version of Cairo Dock that works with Wayland (it is experimental but so far has not died on me).

So all is right with the world in that respect. Only issue is screen capture isn’t great in Wayland but someone is working on it. OBS and other video capture work fine but screen capture programs such Flameshot, Shutter and other need work.

Well Wayland is slowly being adapted so in time I am sure these things will be fixed over the next few months as more and more main distros seem to be moving to Wayland.

It works well enough and to be honest it's even faster for program launch it seems than the original X11 which is now over twenty years old.

I am yet to try the Steam Proton games such as Path of Exile but who knows maybe next time we speak I may have done so.

So with all that madness abound I bid you farewell for this episode.

Hopefully I will try not to break anything major... until next time take care.

[linuxgamenews]

OLD SKIES Unleashes: Your Next Adventure Awaits

OLD SKIES launches the time travel point and click adventure game on Steam Deck, Linux, Mac, and Windows PC. Thanks to the nonstop creativity of Wadjet Eye Games, we’re getting memorable release. Which you can find on Steam and GOG. From the devs who gave us Unavowed and the Blackwell mysteries, comes a brand-new, time travel point and click adventure that’s all about choice, consequence, and chaos: OLD SKIES launches and it’s everything we hoped for — and then some. Imagine being a time travel guide. That’s Fia Quinn’s job. She works for the ChronoZen Time Travel Agency, babysitting rich folks through history so they don’t accidentally erase the moon landing or cause World War 17. Most just want a peek at the past. Others? They’ve got unfinished business. And while Fia’s not supposed to care why they’re jumping, well… stuff happens. Time gets messy. OLD SKIES launches you through seven different missions, all set in New York but across 200 years. We’re talking the dangerous streets of the Gilded Age, shady Prohibition-era speakeasies, and even the World Trade Center… the day before 9/11. This isn’t just a sightseeing tour. It’s personal, emotional, and yeah — sometimes brutal. Expect brain-melting paradox puzzles, moral choices that hit hard, and death. Lots of it. Luckily, time resets. Just don’t get too cocky. This title isn’t just another point and click adventure — it’s a passion project that’s been cooking for six years from the brain of Dave Gilbert, the guy behind nearly every Wadjet Eye classic. He first messed with this time travel idea during a game jam (under a fake name, no less), and now we’re finally getting the full deal.

Old Skies launches

What’s new this time? For starters, the OLD SKIES launch is gorgeous. We’re talking crisp, hand-drawn HD visuals (1920x1080) by Ben Chandler. The soundtrack by Thomas Regin? Absolute vibes. And the voice acting? It's Wadjet Eye’s biggest cast ever, and they crushed it. If you’re a fan of Unavowed or the Blackwell series, keep your eyes peeled for Easter eggs scattered all over. But even if you’re jumping in fresh, this title is built to pull you in emotionally from the first scene. OLD SKIES launches at $19.99 USD / €19.99 / £16.74, plus a 10% discount during launch week on Steam and GOG. Want to dive even deeper into the vibes? Grab the original soundtrack for just $2.99. And yes, Linux and Steam Deck players, this one’s for us too — Wadjet Eye’s always treat us right. So if you’re into story-driven adventures, clever puzzles, and getting your heart stomped on by time travel logic, OLD SKIES is calling. Time to suit up, fix the past, and maybe — just maybe — make peace with it. Which you can find on Steam Deck, Linux, Mac, and Windows PC.

[greenwebpage]

This guide will help you install Visual Studio Code in Ubuntu 24.04.

https://greenwebpage.com/community/how-to-install-visual-studio-vs-code-on-ubuntu-24-04/

[manojnaironline]

The crash of Windows OS-driven systems around the world reminds me of an incident

The crash of Windows OS-driven systems around the world reminds me of an incident I had in my previous organization.  I was the project manager of a small project with about 10 developers. The client was and is one of the biggest companies in India. We were in the last week before the project go-live. All coding was completed and just awaiting client sign-off. It was a Friday. We all went home…

[donjuaninhell]

How I ditched streaming services and learned to love Linux: A step-by-step guide to building your very own personal media streaming server (V2.0: REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION)

This is a revised, corrected and expanded version of my tutorial on setting up a personal media server that previously appeared on my old blog (donjuan-auxenfers). I expect that that post is still making the rounds (hopefully with my addendum on modifying group share permissions in Ubuntu to circumvent 0x8007003B "Unexpected Network Error" messages in Windows 10/11 when transferring files) but I have no way of checking. Anyway this new revised version of the tutorial corrects one or two small errors I discovered when rereading what I wrote, adds links to all products mentioned and is just more polished generally. I also expanded it a bit, pointing more adventurous users toward programs such as Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr and Overseerr which can be used for automating user requests and media collection.

So then, what is this tutorial? This is a tutorial on how to build and set up your own personal media server using Ubuntu as an operating system and Plex (or Jellyfin) to not only manage your media, but to also stream that media to your devices both at home and abroad anywhere in the world where you have an internet connection. Its intent is to show you how building a personal media server and stuffing it full of films, TV, and music that you acquired through indiscriminate and voracious media piracy various legal methods will free you to completely ditch paid streaming services. No more will you have to pay for Disney+, Netflix, HBOMAX, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Peacock, CBS All Access, Paramount+, Crave or any other streaming service that is not named Criterion Channel. Instead whenever you want to watch your favourite films and television shows, you’ll have your own personal service that only features things that you want to see, with files that you have control over. And for music fans out there, both Jellyfin and Plex support music streaming, meaning you can even ditch music streaming services. Goodbye Spotify, Youtube Music, Tidal and Apple Music, welcome back unreasonably large MP3 (or FLAC) collections.

On the hardware front, I’m going to offer a few options catered towards different budgets and media library sizes. The cost of getting a media server up and running using this guide will cost you anywhere from $450 CAD/$325 USD at the low end to $1500 CAD/$1100 USD at the high end (it could go higher). My server was priced closer to the higher figure, but I went and got a lot more storage than most people need. If that seems like a little much, consider for a moment, do you have a roommate, a close friend, or a family member who would be willing to chip in a few bucks towards your little project provided they get access? Well that's how I funded my server. It might also be worth thinking about the cost over time, i.e. how much you spend yearly on subscriptions vs. a one time cost of setting up a server. Additionally there's just the joy of being able to scream "fuck you" at all those show cancelling, library deleting, hedge fund vampire CEOs who run the studios through denying them your money. Drive a stake through David Zaslav's heart.

On the software side I will walk you step-by-step through installing Ubuntu as your server's operating system, configuring your storage as a RAIDz array with ZFS, sharing your zpool to Windows with Samba, running a remote connection between your server and your Windows PC, and then a little about started with Plex/Jellyfin. Every terminal command you will need to input will be provided, and I even share a custom #bash script that will make used vs. available drive space on your server display correctly in Windows.

If you have a different preferred flavour of Linux (Arch, Manjaro, Redhat, Fedora, Mint, OpenSUSE, CentOS, Slackware etc. et. al.) and are aching to tell me off for being basic and using Ubuntu, this tutorial is not for you. The sort of person with a preferred Linux distro is the sort of person who can do this sort of thing in their sleep. Also I don't care. This tutorial is intended for the average home computer user. This is also why we’re not using a more exotic home server solution like running everything through Docker Containers and managing it through a dashboard like Homarr or Heimdall. While such solutions are fantastic and can be very easy to maintain once you have it all set up, wrapping your brain around Docker is a whole thing in and of itself. If you do follow this tutorial and had fun putting everything together, then I would encourage you to return in a year’s time, do your research and set up everything with Docker Containers.

Lastly, this is a tutorial aimed at Windows users. Although I was a daily user of OS X for many years (roughly 2008-2023) and I've dabbled quite a bit with various Linux distributions (mostly Ubuntu and Manjaro), my primary OS these days is Windows 11. Many things in this tutorial will still be applicable to Mac users, but others (e.g. setting up shares) you will have to look up for yourself. I doubt it would be difficult to do so.

Nothing in this tutorial will require feats of computing expertise. All you will need is a basic computer literacy (i.e. an understanding of what a filesystem and directory are, and a degree of comfort in the settings menu) and a willingness to learn a thing or two. While this guide may look overwhelming at first glance, it is only because I want to be as thorough as possible. I want you to understand exactly what it is you're doing, I don't want you to just blindly follow steps. If you half-way know what you’re doing, you will be much better prepared if you ever need to troubleshoot.

Honestly, once you have all the hardware ready it shouldn't take more than an afternoon or two to get everything up and running.

(This tutorial is just shy of seven thousand words long so the rest is under the cut.)

Step One: Choosing Your Hardware

Linux is a light weight operating system, depending on the distribution there's close to no bloat. There are recent distributions available at this very moment that will run perfectly fine on a fourteen year old i3 with 4GB of RAM. Moreover, running Plex or Jellyfin isn’t resource intensive in 90% of use cases. All this is to say, we don’t require an expensive or powerful computer. This means that there are several options available: 1) use an old computer you already have sitting around but aren't using 2) buy a used workstation from eBay, or what I believe to be the best option, 3) order an N100 Mini-PC from AliExpress or Amazon.

Note: If you already have an old PC sitting around that you’ve decided to use, fantastic, move on to the next step.

When weighing your options, keep a few things in mind: the number of people you expect to be streaming simultaneously at any one time, the resolution and bitrate of your media library (4k video takes a lot more processing power than 1080p) and most importantly, how many of those clients are going to be transcoding at any one time. Transcoding is what happens when the playback device does not natively support direct playback of the source file. This can happen for a number of reasons, such as the playback device's native resolution being lower than the file's internal resolution, or because the source file was encoded in a video codec unsupported by the playback device.

Ideally we want any transcoding to be performed by hardware. This means we should be looking for a computer with an Intel processor with Quick Sync. Quick Sync is a dedicated core on the CPU die designed specifically for video encoding and decoding. This specialized hardware makes for highly efficient transcoding both in terms of processing overhead and power draw. Without these Quick Sync cores, transcoding must be brute forced through software. This takes up much more of a CPU’s processing power and requires much more energy. But not all Quick Sync cores are created equal and you need to keep this in mind if you've decided either to use an old computer or to shop for a used workstation on eBay

Any Intel processor from second generation Core (Sandy Bridge circa 2011) onward has Quick Sync cores. It's not until 6th gen (Skylake), however, that the cores support the H.265 HEVC codec. Intel’s 10th gen (Comet Lake) processors introduce support for 10bit HEVC and HDR tone mapping. And the recent 12th gen (Alder Lake) processors brought with them hardware AV1 decoding. As an example, while an 8th gen (Kaby Lake) i5-8500 will be able to hardware transcode a H.265 encoded file, it will fall back to software transcoding if given a 10bit H.265 file. If you’ve decided to use that old PC or to look on eBay for an old Dell Optiplex keep this in mind.

Note 1: The price of old workstations varies wildly and fluctuates frequently. If you get lucky and go shopping shortly after a workplace has liquidated a large number of their workstations you can find deals for as low as $100 on a barebones system, but generally an i5-8500 workstation with 16gb RAM will cost you somewhere in the area of $260 CAD/$200 USD.

Note 2: The AMD equivalent to Quick Sync is called Video Core Next, and while it's fine, it's not as efficient and not as mature a technology. It was only introduced with the first generation Ryzen CPUs and it only got decent with their newest CPUs, we want something cheap.

Alternatively you could forgo having to keep track of what generation of CPU is equipped with Quick Sync cores that feature support for which codecs, and just buy an N100 mini-PC. For around the same price or less of a used workstation you can pick up a mini-PC with an Intel N100 processor. The N100 is a four-core processor based on the 12th gen Alder Lake architecture and comes equipped with the latest revision of the Quick Sync cores. These little processors offer astounding hardware transcoding capabilities for their size and power draw. Otherwise they perform equivalent to an i5-6500, which isn't a terrible CPU. A friend of mine uses an N100 machine as a dedicated retro emulation gaming system and it does everything up to 6th generation consoles just fine. The N100 is also a remarkably efficient chip, it sips power. In fact, the difference between running one of these and an old workstation could work out to hundreds of dollars a year in energy bills depending on where you live.

You can find these Mini-PCs all over Amazon or for a little cheaper on AliExpress. They range in price from $170 CAD/$125 USD for a no name N100 with 8GB RAM to $280 CAD/$200 USD for a Beelink S12 Pro with 16GB RAM. The brand doesn't really matter, they're all coming from the same three factories in Shenzen, go for whichever one fits your budget or has features you want. 8GB RAM should be enough, Linux is lightweight and Plex only calls for 2GB RAM. 16GB RAM might result in a slightly snappier experience, especially with ZFS. A 256GB SSD is more than enough for what we need as a boot drive, but going for a bigger drive might allow you to get away with things like creating preview thumbnails for Plex, but it’s up to you and your budget.

The Mini-PC I wound up buying was a Firebat AK2 Plus with 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD. It looks like this:

Note: Be forewarned that if you decide to order a Mini-PC from AliExpress, note the type of power adapter it ships with. The mini-PC I bought came with an EU power adapter and I had to supply my own North American power supply. Thankfully this is a minor issue as barrel plug 30W/12V/2.5A power adapters are easy to find and can be had for $10.

Step Two: Choosing Your Storage

Storage is the most important part of our build. It is also the most expensive. Thankfully it’s also the most easily upgrade-able down the line.

For people with a smaller media collection (4TB to 8TB), a more limited budget, or who will only ever have two simultaneous streams running, I would say that the most economical course of action would be to buy a USB 3.0 8TB external HDD. Something like this one from Western Digital or this one from Seagate. One of these external drives will cost you in the area of $200 CAD/$140 USD. Down the line you could add a second external drive or replace it with a multi-drive RAIDz set up such as detailed below.

If a single external drive the path for you, move on to step three.

For people with larger media libraries (12TB+), who prefer media in 4k, or care who about data redundancy, the answer is a RAID array featuring multiple HDDs in an enclosure.

Note: If you are using an old PC or used workstatiom as your server and have the room for at least three 3.5" drives, and as many open SATA ports on your mother board you won't need an enclosure, just install the drives into the case. If your old computer is a laptop or doesn’t have room for more internal drives, then I would suggest an enclosure.

The minimum number of drives needed to run a RAIDz array is three, and seeing as RAIDz is what we will be using, you should be looking for an enclosure with three to five bays. I think that four disks makes for a good compromise for a home server. Regardless of whether you go for a three, four, or five bay enclosure, do be aware that in a RAIDz array the space equivalent of one of the drives will be dedicated to parity at a ratio expressed by the equation 1 − 1/n i.e. in a four bay enclosure equipped with four 12TB drives, if we configured our drives in a RAIDz1 array we would be left with a total of 36TB of usable space (48TB raw size). The reason for why we might sacrifice storage space in such a manner will be explained in the next section.

A four bay enclosure will cost somewhere in the area of $200 CDN/$140 USD. You don't need anything fancy, we don't need anything with hardware RAID controls (RAIDz is done entirely in software) or even USB-C. An enclosure with USB 3.0 will perform perfectly fine. Don’t worry too much about USB speed bottlenecks. A mechanical HDD will be limited by the speed of its mechanism long before before it will be limited by the speed of a USB connection. I've seen decent looking enclosures from TerraMaster, Yottamaster, Mediasonic and Sabrent.

When it comes to selecting the drives, as of this writing, the best value (dollar per gigabyte) are those in the range of 12TB to 20TB. I settled on 12TB drives myself. If 12TB to 20TB drives are out of your budget, go with what you can afford, or look into refurbished drives. I'm not sold on the idea of refurbished drives but many people swear by them.

When shopping for harddrives, search for drives designed specifically for NAS use. Drives designed for NAS use typically have better vibration dampening and are designed to be active 24/7. They will also often make use of CMR (conventional magnetic recording) as opposed to SMR (shingled magnetic recording). This nets them a sizable read/write performance bump over typical desktop drives. Seagate Ironwolf and Toshiba NAS are both well regarded brands when it comes to NAS drives. I would avoid Western Digital Red drives at this time. WD Reds were a go to recommendation up until earlier this year when it was revealed that they feature firmware that will throw up false SMART warnings telling you to replace the drive at the three year mark quite often when there is nothing at all wrong with that drive. It will likely even be good for another six, seven, or more years.

Step Three: Installing Linux

For this step you will need a USB thumbdrive of at least 6GB in capacity, an .ISO of Ubuntu, and a way to make that thumbdrive bootable media.

First download a copy of Ubuntu desktop (for best performance we could download the Server release, but for new Linux users I would recommend against the server release. The server release is strictly command line interface only, and having a GUI is very helpful for most people. Not many people are wholly comfortable doing everything through the command line, I'm certainly not one of them, and I grew up with DOS 6.0. 22.04.3 Jammy Jellyfish is the current Long Term Service release, this is the one to get.

Download the .ISO and then download and install balenaEtcher on your Windows PC. BalenaEtcher is an easy to use program for creating bootable media, you simply insert your thumbdrive, select the .ISO you just downloaded, and it will create a bootable installation media for you.

Once you've made a bootable media and you've got your Mini-PC (or you old PC/used workstation) in front of you, hook it directly into your router with an ethernet cable, and then plug in the HDD enclosure, a monitor, a mouse and a keyboard. Now turn that sucker on and hit whatever key gets you into the BIOS (typically ESC, DEL or F2). If you’re using a Mini-PC check to make sure that the P1 and P2 power limits are set correctly, my N100's P1 limit was set at 10W, a full 20W under the chip's power limit. Also make sure that the RAM is running at the advertised speed. My Mini-PC’s RAM was set at 2333Mhz out of the box when it should have been 3200Mhz. Once you’ve done that, key over to the boot order and place the USB drive first in the boot order. Then save the BIOS settings and restart.

After you restart you’ll be greeted by Ubuntu's installation screen. Installing Ubuntu is really straight forward, select the "minimal" installation option, as we won't need anything on this computer except for a browser (Ubuntu comes preinstalled with Firefox) and Plex Media Server/Jellyfin Media Server. Also remember to delete and reformat that Windows partition! We don't need it.

Step Four: Installing ZFS and Setting Up the RAIDz Array

Note: If you opted for just a single external HDD skip this step and move onto setting up a Samba share.

Once Ubuntu is installed it's time to configure our storage by installing ZFS to build our RAIDz array. ZFS is a "next-gen" file system that is both massively flexible and massively complex. It's capable of snapshot backup, self healing error correction, ZFS pools can be configured with drives operating in a supplemental manner alongside the storage vdev (e.g. fast cache, dedicated secondary intent log, hot swap spares etc.). It's also a file system very amenable to fine tuning. Block and sector size are adjustable to use case and you're afforded the option of different methods of inline compression. If you'd like a very detailed overview and explanation of its various features and tips on tuning a ZFS array check out these articles from Ars Technica. For now we're going to ignore all these features and keep it simple, we're going to pull our drives together into a single vdev running in RAIDz which will be the entirety of our zpool, no fancy cache drive or SLOG.

Open up the terminal and type the following commands:

sudo apt update

then

sudo apt install zfsutils-linux

This will install the ZFS utility. Verify that it's installed with the following command:

zfs --version

Now, it's time to check that the HDDs we have in the enclosure are healthy, running, and recognized. We also want to find out their device IDs and take note of them:

sudo fdisk -1

Note: You might be wondering why some of these commands require "sudo" in front of them while others don't. "Sudo" is short for "super user do”. When and where "sudo" is used has to do with the way permissions are set up in Linux. Only the "root" user has the access level to perform certain tasks in Linux. As a matter of security and safety regular user accounts are kept separate from the "root" user. It's not advised (or even possible) to boot into Linux as "root" with most modern distributions. Instead by using "sudo" our regular user account is temporarily given the power to do otherwise forbidden things. Don't worry about it too much at this stage, but if you want to know more check out this introduction.

If everything is working you should get a list of the various drives detected along with their device IDs which will look like this: /dev/sdc. You can also check the device IDs of the drives by opening the disk utility app. Jot these IDs down as we'll need them for our next step, creating our RAIDz array.

RAIDz is similar to RAID-5 in that instead of striping your data over multiple disks, exchanging redundancy for speed and available space (RAID-0), or mirroring your data writing by two copies of every piece (RAID-1), it instead writes parity blocks across the disks in addition to striping, this provides a balance of speed, redundancy and available space. If a single drive fails, the parity blocks on the working drives can be used to reconstruct the entire array as soon as a replacement drive is added.

Additionally, RAIDz improves over some of the common RAID-5 flaws. It's more resilient and capable of self healing, as it is capable of automatically checking for errors against a checksum. It's more forgiving in this way, and it's likely that you'll be able to detect when a drive is dying well before it fails. A RAIDz array can survive the loss of any one drive.

Note: While RAIDz is indeed resilient, if a second drive fails during the rebuild, you're fucked. Always keep backups of things you can't afford to lose. This tutorial, however, is not about proper data safety.

To create the pool, use the following command:

sudo zpool create "zpoolnamehere" raidz "device IDs of drives we're putting in the pool"

For example, let's creatively name our zpool "mypool". This poil will consist of four drives which have the device IDs: sdb, sdc, sdd, and sde. The resulting command will look like this:

sudo zpool create mypool raidz /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd /dev/sde

If as an example you bought five HDDs and decided you wanted more redundancy dedicating two drive to this purpose, we would modify the command to "raidz2" and the command would look something like the following:

sudo zpool create mypool raidz2 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd /dev/sde /dev/sdf

An array configured like this is known as RAIDz2 and is able to survive two disk failures.

Once the zpool has been created, we can check its status with the command:

zpool status

Or more concisely with:

zpool list

The nice thing about ZFS as a file system is that a pool is ready to go immediately after creation. If we were to set up a traditional RAID-5 array using mbam, we'd have to sit through a potentially hours long process of reformatting and partitioning the drives. Instead we're ready to go right out the gates.

The zpool should be automatically mounted to the filesystem after creation, check on that with the following:

df -hT | grep zfs

Note: If your computer ever loses power suddenly, say in event of a power outage, you may have to re-import your pool. In most cases, ZFS will automatically import and mount your pool, but if it doesn’t and you can't see your array, simply open the terminal and type sudo zpool import -a.

By default a zpool is mounted at /"zpoolname". The pool should be under our ownership but let's make sure with the following command:

sudo chown -R "yourlinuxusername" /"zpoolname"

Note: Changing file and folder ownership with "chown" and file and folder permissions with "chmod" are essential commands for much of the admin work in Linux, but we won't be dealing with them extensively in this guide. If you'd like a deeper tutorial and explanation you can check out these two guides: chown and chmod.

You can access the zpool file system through the GUI by opening the file manager (the Ubuntu default file manager is called Nautilus) and clicking on "Other Locations" on the sidebar, then entering the Ubuntu file system and looking for a folder with your pool's name. Bookmark the folder on the sidebar for easy access.

Your storage pool is now ready to go. Assuming that we already have some files on our Windows PC we want to copy to over, we're going to need to install and configure Samba to make the pool accessible in Windows.

Step Five: Setting Up Samba/Sharing

Samba is what's going to let us share the zpool with Windows and allow us to write to it from our Windows machine. First let's install Samba with the following commands:

sudo apt-get update

then

sudo apt-get install samba

Next create a password for Samba.

sudo smbpswd -a "yourlinuxusername"

It will then prompt you to create a password. Just reuse your Ubuntu user password for simplicity's sake.

Note: if you're using just a single external drive replace the zpool location in the following commands with wherever it is your external drive is mounted, for more information see this guide on mounting an external drive in Ubuntu.

After you've created a password we're going to create a shareable folder in our pool with this command

mkdir /"zpoolname"/"foldername"

Now we're going to open the smb.conf file and make that folder shareable. Enter the following command.

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

This will open the .conf file in nano, the terminal text editor program. Now at the end of smb.conf add the following entry:

["foldername"]

path = /"zpoolname"/"foldername"

available = yes

valid users = "yourlinuxusername"

read only = no

writable = yes

browseable = yes

guest ok = no

Ensure that there are no line breaks between the lines and that there's a space on both sides of the equals sign. Our next step is to allow Samba traffic through the firewall:

sudo ufw allow samba

Finally restart the Samba service:

sudo systemctl restart smbd

At this point we'll be able to access to the pool, browse its contents, and read and write to it from Windows. But there's one more thing left to do, Windows doesn't natively support the ZFS file systems and will read the used/available/total space in the pool incorrectly. Windows will read available space as total drive space, and all used space as null. This leads to Windows only displaying a dwindling amount of "available" space as the drives are filled. We can fix this! Functionally this doesn't actually matter, we can still write and read to and from the disk, it just makes it difficult to tell at a glance the proportion of used/available space, so this is an optional step but one I recommend (this step is also unnecessary if you're just using a single external drive). What we're going to do is write a little shell script in #bash. Open nano with the terminal with the command:

nano

Now insert the following code:

#!/bin/bash CUR_PATH=`pwd` ZFS_CHECK_OUTPUT=$(zfs get type $CUR_PATH 2>&1 > /dev/null) > /dev/null if [[ $ZFS_CHECK_OUTPUT == *not\ a\ ZFS* ]] then IS_ZFS=false else IS_ZFS=true fi if [[ $IS_ZFS = false ]] then df $CUR_PATH | tail -1 | awk '{print $2" "$4}' else USED=$((`zfs get -o value -Hp used $CUR_PATH` / 1024)) > /dev/null AVAIL=$((`zfs get -o value -Hp available $CUR_PATH` / 1024)) > /dev/null TOTAL=$(($USED+$AVAIL)) > /dev/null echo $TOTAL $AVAIL fi

Save the script as "dfree.sh" to /home/"yourlinuxusername" then change the ownership of the file to make it executable with this command:

sudo chmod 774 dfree.sh

Now open smb.conf with sudo again:

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

Now add this entry to the top of the configuration file to direct Samba to use the results of our script when Windows asks for a reading on the pool's used/available/total drive space:

[global]

dfree command = /home/"yourlinuxusername"/dfree.sh

Save the changes to smb.conf and then restart Samba again with the terminal:

sudo systemctl restart smbd

Now there’s one more thing we need to do to fully set up the Samba share, and that’s to modify a hidden group permission. In the terminal window type the following command:

usermod -a -G sambashare “yourlinuxusername”

Then restart samba again:

sudo systemctl restart smbd

If we don’t do this last step, everything will appear to work fine, and you will even be able to see and map the drive from Windows and even begin transferring files, but you'd soon run into a lot of frustration. As every ten minutes or so a file would fail to transfer and you would get a window announcing “0x8007003B Unexpected Network Error”. This window would require your manual input to continue the transfer with the file next in the queue. And at the end it would reattempt to transfer whichever files failed the first time around. 99% of the time they’ll go through that second try, but this is still all a major pain in the ass. Especially if you’ve got a lot of data to transfer or you want to step away from the computer for a while.

It turns out samba can act a little weirdly with the higher read/write speeds of RAIDz arrays and transfers from Windows, and will intermittently crash and restart itself if this group option isn’t changed. Inputting the above command will prevent you from ever seeing that window.

The last thing we're going to do before switching over to our Windows PC is grab the IP address of our Linux machine. Enter the following command:

hostname -I

This will spit out this computer's IP address on the local network (it will look something like 192.168.0.x), write it down. It might be a good idea once you're done here to go into your router settings and reserving that IP for your Linux system in the DHCP settings. Check the manual for your specific model router on how to access its settings, typically it can be accessed by opening a browser and typing http:\\192.168.0.1 in the address bar, but your router may be different.

Okay we’re done with our Linux computer for now. Get on over to your Windows PC, open File Explorer, right click on Network and click "Map network drive". Select Z: as the drive letter (you don't want to map the network drive to a letter you could conceivably be using for other purposes) and enter the IP of your Linux machine and location of the share like so: \\"LINUXCOMPUTERLOCALIPADDRESSGOESHERE"\"zpoolnamegoeshere"\. Windows will then ask you for your username and password, enter the ones you set earlier in Samba and you're good. If you've done everything right it should look something like this:

You can now start moving media over from Windows to the share folder. It's a good idea to have a hard line running to all machines. Moving files over Wi-Fi is going to be tortuously slow, the only thing that’s going to make the transfer time tolerable (hours instead of days) is a solid wired connection between both machines and your router.

Step Six: Setting Up Remote Desktop Access to Your Server

After the server is up and going, you’ll want to be able to access it remotely from Windows. Barring serious maintenance/updates, this is how you'll access it most of the time. On your Linux system open the terminal and enter:

sudo apt install xrdp

Then:

sudo systemctl enable xrdp

Once it's finished installing, open “Settings” on the sidebar and turn off "automatic login" in the User category. Then log out of your account. Attempting to remotely connect to your Linux computer while you’re logged in will result in a black screen!

Now get back on your Windows PC, open search and look for "RDP". A program called "Remote Desktop Connection" should pop up, open this program as an administrator by right-clicking and selecting “run as an administrator”. You’ll be greeted with a window. In the field marked “Computer” type in the IP address of your Linux computer. Press connect and you'll be greeted with a new window and prompt asking for your username and password. Enter your Ubuntu username and password here.

If everything went right, you’ll be logged into your Linux computer. If the performance is sluggish, adjust the display options. Lowering the resolution and colour depth do a lot to make the interface feel snappier.

Remote access is how we're going to be using our Linux system from now, barring edge cases like needing to get into the BIOS or upgrading to a new version of Ubuntu. Everything else from performing maintenance like a monthly zpool scrub to checking zpool status and updating software can all be done remotely.

This is how my server lives its life now, happily humming and chirping away on the floor next to the couch in a corner of the living room.

Step Seven: Plex Media Server/Jellyfin

Okay we’ve got all the ground work finished and our server is almost up and running. We’ve got Ubuntu up and running, our storage array is primed, we’ve set up remote connections and sharing, and maybe we’ve moved over some of favourite movies and TV shows.

Now we need to decide on the media server software to use which will stream our media to us and organize our library. For most people I’d recommend Plex. It just works 99% of the time. That said, Jellyfin has a lot to recommend it by too, even if it is rougher around the edges. Some people run both simultaneously, it’s not that big of an extra strain. I do recommend doing a little bit of your own research into the features each platform offers, but as a quick run down, consider some of the following points:

Plex is closed source and is funded through PlexPass purchases while Jellyfin is open source and entirely user driven. This means a number of things: for one, Plex requires you to purchase a “PlexPass” (purchased as a one time lifetime fee $159.99 CDN/$120 USD or paid for on a monthly or yearly subscription basis) in order to access to certain features, like hardware transcoding (and we want hardware transcoding) or automated intro/credits detection and skipping, Jellyfin offers some of these features for free through plugins. Plex supports a lot more devices than Jellyfin and updates more frequently. That said, Jellyfin's Android and iOS apps are completely free, while the Plex Android and iOS apps must be activated for a one time cost of $6 CDN/$5 USD. But that $6 fee gets you a mobile app that is much more functional and features a unified UI across platforms, the Plex mobile apps are simply a more polished experience. The Jellyfin apps are a bit of a mess and the iOS and Android versions are very different from each other.

Jellyfin’s actual media player is more fully featured than Plex's, but on the other hand Jellyfin's UI, library customization and automatic media tagging really pale in comparison to Plex. Streaming your music library is free through both Jellyfin and Plex, but Plex offers the PlexAmp app for dedicated music streaming which boasts a number of fantastic features, unfortunately some of those fantastic features require a PlexPass. If your internet is down, Jellyfin can still do local streaming, while Plex can fail to play files unless you've got it set up a certain way. Jellyfin has a slew of neat niche features like support for Comic Book libraries with the .cbz/.cbt file types, but then Plex offers some free ad-supported TV and films, they even have a free channel that plays nothing but Classic Doctor Who.

Ultimately it's up to you, I settled on Plex because although some features are pay-walled, it just works. It's more reliable and easier to use, and a one-time fee is much easier to swallow than a subscription. I had a pretty easy time getting my boomer parents and tech illiterate brother introduced to and using Plex and I don't know if I would've had as easy a time doing that with Jellyfin. I do also need to mention that Jellyfin does take a little extra bit of tinkering to get going in Ubuntu, you’ll have to set up process permissions, so if you're more tolerant to tinkering, Jellyfin might be up your alley and I’ll trust that you can follow their installation and configuration guide. For everyone else, I recommend Plex.

So pick your poison: Plex or Jellyfin.

Note: The easiest way to download and install either of these packages in Ubuntu is through Snap Store.

After you've installed one (or both), opening either app will launch a browser window into the browser version of the app allowing you to set all the options server side.

The process of adding creating media libraries is essentially the same in both Plex and Jellyfin. You create a separate libraries for Television, Movies, and Music and add the folders which contain the respective types of media to their respective libraries. The only difficult or time consuming aspect is ensuring that your files and folders follow the appropriate naming conventions:

Plex naming guide for Movies

Plex naming guide for Television

Jellyfin follows the same naming rules but I find their media scanner to be a lot less accurate and forgiving than Plex. Once you've selected the folders to be scanned the service will scan your files, tagging everything and adding metadata. Although I find do find Plex more accurate, it can still erroneously tag some things and you might have to manually clean up some tags in a large library. (When I initially created my library it tagged the 1963-1989 Doctor Who as some Korean soap opera and I needed to manually select the correct match after which everything was tagged normally.) It can also be a bit testy with anime (especially OVAs) be sure to check TVDB to ensure that you have your files and folders structured and named correctly. If something is not showing up at all, double check the name.

Once that's done, organizing and customizing your library is easy. You can set up collections, grouping items together to fit a theme or collect together all the entries in a franchise. You can make playlists, and add custom artwork to entries. It's fun setting up collections with posters to match, there are even several websites dedicated to help you do this like PosterDB. As an example, below are two collections in my library, one collecting all the entries in a franchise, the other follows a theme.

My Star Trek collection, featuring all eleven television series, and thirteen films.

My Best of the Worst collection, featuring sixty-nine films previously showcased on RedLetterMedia’s Best of the Worst. They’re all absolutely terrible and I love them.

As for settings, ensure you've got Remote Access going, it should work automatically and be sure to set your upload speed after running a speed test. In the library settings set the database cache to 2000MB to ensure a snappier and more responsive browsing experience, and then check that playback quality is set to original/maximum. If you’re severely bandwidth limited on your upload and have remote users, you might want to limit the remote stream bitrate to something more reasonable, just as a note of comparison Netflix’s 1080p bitrate is approximately 5Mbps, although almost anyone watching through a chromium based browser is streaming at 720p and 3mbps. Other than that you should be good to go. For actually playing your files, there's a Plex app for just about every platform imaginable. I mostly watch television and films on my laptop using the Windows Plex app, but I also use the Android app which can broadcast to the chromecast connected to the TV in the office and the Android TV app for our smart TV. Both are fully functional and easy to navigate, and I can also attest to the OS X version being equally functional.

Part Eight: Finding Media

Now, this is not really a piracy tutorial, there are plenty of those out there. But if you’re unaware, BitTorrent is free and pretty easy to use, just pick a client (qBittorrent is the best) and go find some public trackers to peruse. Just know now that all the best trackers are private and invite only, and that they can be exceptionally difficult to get into. I’m already on a few, and even then, some of the best ones are wholly out of my reach.

If you decide to take the left hand path and turn to Usenet you’ll have to pay. First you’ll need to sign up with a provider like Newshosting or EasyNews for access to Usenet itself, and then to actually find anything you’re going to need to sign up with an indexer like NZBGeek or NZBFinder. There are dozens of indexers, and many people cross post between them, but for more obscure media it’s worth checking multiple. You’ll also need a binary downloader like SABnzbd. That caveat aside, Usenet is faster, bigger, older, less traceable than BitTorrent, and altogether slicker. I honestly prefer it, and I'm kicking myself for taking this long to start using it because I was scared off by the price. I’ve found so many things on Usenet that I had sought in vain elsewhere for years, like a 2010 Italian film about a massacre perpetrated by the SS that played the festival circuit but never received a home media release; some absolute hero uploaded a rip of a festival screener DVD to Usenet. Anyway, figure out the rest of this shit on your own and remember to use protection, get yourself behind a VPN, use a SOCKS5 proxy with your BitTorrent client, etc.

On the legal side of things, if you’re around my age, you (or your family) probably have a big pile of DVDs and Blu-Rays sitting around unwatched and half forgotten. Why not do a bit of amateur media preservation, rip them and upload them to your server for easier access? (Your tools for this are going to be Handbrake to do the ripping and AnyDVD to break any encryption.) I went to the trouble of ripping all my SCTV DVDs (five box sets worth) because none of it is on streaming nor could it be found on any pirate source I tried. I’m glad I did, forty years on it’s still one of the funniest shows to ever be on TV.

Part Nine/Epilogue: Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr and Overseerr

There are a lot of ways to automate your server for better functionality or to add features you and other users might find useful. Sonarr, Radarr, and Lidarr are a part of a suite of “Servarr” services (there’s also Readarr for books and Whisparr for adult content) that allow you to automate the collection of new episodes of TV shows (Sonarr), new movie releases (Radarr) and music releases (Lidarr). They hook in to your BitTorrent client or Usenet binary newsgroup downloader and crawl your preferred Torrent trackers and Usenet indexers, alerting you to new releases and automatically grabbing them. You can also use these services to manually search for new media, and even replace/upgrade your existing media with better quality uploads. They’re really a little tricky to set up on a bare metal Ubuntu install (ideally you should be running them in Docker Containers), and I won’t be providing a step by step on installing and running them, I’m simply making you aware of their existence.

The other bit of kit I want to make you aware of is Overseerr which is a program that scans your Plex media library and will serve recommendations based on what you like. It also allows you and your users to request specific media. It can even be integrated with Sonarr/Radarr/Lidarr so that fulfilling those requests is fully automated.

And you're done. It really wasn't all that hard. Enjoy your media. Enjoy the control you have over that media. And be safe in the knowledge that no hedgefund CEO motherfucker who hates the movies but who is somehow in control of a major studio will be able to disappear anything in your library as a tax write-off.

[liquidcrystalsky]

shout out to deltarune not coming out with a linux version and just making you use the windows version through WINE and then having a launch issue where the demo files aren't being moved over to the full game (kind of a steam issue due to sandboxing the demo apart from the full game) and then telling "steam deck" users (why is linux such a dirty word to people) to just manually move over the files while it's apparently not that hard in gamemaker studio to export to linux and people have already found ways to take the macos version and run it natively on linux without any access to source code or debug tools like thanks

also did you know game maker only exports to "ubuntu" despite it just. running fine on any other linux os but okay

[stroyent]

just cried for a couple of minutes in frustration with ubuntu, and I'm not sure if I want to do this anymore. windows sucks but at least everything I need mostly works out of the box (unless it needs a specific version of microsoft visual studio c++ redistributable). now I have to install dependencies for dependencies for dependencies and I really don't like it

[rapidpunches]

Found out I don't have the hardware to run Win11 when security updates and support for Win10 stops 🙃 I run Linux on my work laptop just fine but it seems I'll be lagging behind in other places. Like, some windows programs will run in Linux using wine, winetricks, proton, whatever but they never work perfect. I'm using Manjaro anyway.

To anyone who reads this, this is your heads up to start saving money if you can assuming you need a computer for something Win11 specific. To the rest, start researching how to install Linux Mint Xfce (or MATE), or Ubuntu Studio, to get some extra use years out of what you have currently. You'll need a USB stick.

[lilblucat]

I just saw the ask by slushysblog. In response you sent a gif that blew me away:

You see, I'm just getting into digital art, and my PC can only handle about 5 or 6 layers before my graphics environment crashes. (Ofc this forces me to restart my PC and lose anything not saved.)

I've learned to work around this, my art isn't nearly so complex as yours, but I know if I want to continue I'll have to get a better computer at some point.

I was hoping you could tell me a bit about the technical side of your work. What are your PC specs? What software do you use? That sort of thing.

Thanks in advance! I love your art!

My set-up is complete overkill for art. It's a heavy gaming-ready desktop PC I got a few years back that I've upgraded the RAM and storage on over the years. I was doing fine with 16GB of RAM but I always have open a lot in CSP and other stuff so upgrading was definitely something I needed to do. 16GB should be fine for most people though.

You can also see that I run Arch Linux and uh yeahhhhhh it's a long story. The short of it is that my old laptop broke its Windows install during an update and I was completely unable to fix it so I just.... switched to Linux lol. I started out on Ubuntu and switched to Arch after a while. I don't rec using Arch unless you know what you're doing, Ubuntu is way easier.

What you might find more interesting is my away from home set up on my laptop since it's an older gaming laptop.

The graphics card is actually a NVIDIA Geforce 850 or something. It's so old that you can't play some games on it. However, I have no issues with it for art. I can open my comic project files in CSP fine on it. It's also running on Linux Mint, which isn't showing up on the little image for some reason. Both of my devices run Linux, but that's a me preference/need thing and I don't rec messing with your operating system if you don't know much about computers. It gives me a bit of an edge since the system doesn't use as much RAM as Windows but yeah don't touch unless you're committed to learn. Windows will serve you fine. Or MacOS even.

As for my program, I use Clip Studio Paint EX. I bought Pro a long time ago and upgraded to EX because of the extra tools for comics and animation (I've heard animators don't like CSP though, it's the BEST program for comics however). It's a really solid program but the recent changes to pricing and updates is really stupid. Fun fact: I use only default brushes and materials because getting it to run on Linux breaks the store. I also use an older version of it because of how I got it working on this system.

For my tablet I use an XP-Pen Artist 12 Pro. It's a pretty solid screen tablet on a budget (I bought it on a sale) and I have no issues with it. I actually partly got it because I thought it was cool that XP-Pen carries official drivers for Linux too, and this helped a bit since this was before Windows bricked on me and I switched to that. It was kinda weird how it played out lol. I would heavily not rec a Wacom tablet unless it's an older one for cheap. Wacom is stupidly expensive and you can get a better bang for your buck at other companies. My first tablet is a Wacom and it's still holding up pretty well but their quality on their new tablets isn't great. Check out XP-Pen, Gaomon, and Huion for better tablet options.

[mirqmarq428]

do you have any tips or videos for beginners about Linux? and what would be best for like, idk Photoshop & CSP (maybe blender too) + Steam & Minecraft?

Steam runs on Linux natively - that's why the steam deck works. Same with Blender and Minecraft(Java). Minecraft Bedrock isn't officially supported but there is an unofficial launcher that runs the android version.

Photoshop isn't available, but photopea exists and iv heard good things. It's free, of course. Also, GIMP has you covered for 80% of edits. And if you do mostly vectors, Inkscape is great.

I hadn't heard of clip studio paint before this, but google says you should try Krita. It's available on every os too so no need to commit before trying it out.

Picking a linux distribution: i recommend Ubuntu. It's the most popular/common and has the most software available (arch and nix users, pretend you didn't hear that). Also the interface doesn't try to look like windows or macos, which puts your brain in learning mode.

This video seems like a good install walkthru, if a bit dry. Things have gotten quite straightforward in recent years...

[linuxgamenews]

Get Ready for Intense Battles in HeistGeist Cyberpunk RPG

HeistGeist cyberpunk RPG game launches the story-driven experience on Linux, Mac, and Windows PC. Developer Doublequote Studio’s creative talents bring this release to life. Now on Steam with a discount and 94% Positive reviews. Get ready to dive into the gritty cyberpunk world of HeistGeist! The latest single-player RPG from indie studio Doublequote Studio is finally here. Now live on Steam for Linux. This game has all the ingredients to keep you hooked — high-stakes heists, intense battles, deep storytelling, and that cyberpunk aesthetic. In HeistGeist, you step into the shoes of Alexandra, a skilled thief on the run after a job goes south. Set in a fictional Central Europe in the 2040s, the gameplay drops you into a world where corporations rule, tech is everywhere, and every choice you make could change the course of the story. Your mission? Build a crew of specialists to help you pull off some truly epic heists while staying one step ahead of the powerful corporations who’d like nothing more than to see you fail. What’s unique about HeistGeist is its cyberpunk and unique approach to combat and strategy. Battles are card-based, meaning you’ll use a deck of cards to outwit security systems, guards, and other obstacles in your path. You’re not just slapping down random cards, either — HeistGeist lets you create killer combos, level up your deck, and even adapt your cyberpunk strategies depending on your playstyle. Whether you’re into all-out offense or a more tactical approach, this title lets you play your way, with controller support..

HeistGeist cyberpunk RPG - Launch Trailer

The hacking system takes things up a notch. Rather than just pressing a button to hack into these cyberpunk systems, HeistGeist makes hacking a title of its own. Imagine cyberspace as a grid, and each move you make involves placing programs and viruses to break through the servers’ defenses. It’s strategic and totally immersive, keeping the hacking experience fresh and engaging every step of the way. Of course, no cyberpunk game would be complete without a solid storyline, and HeistGeist delivers. The title is fully voiced, so you’ll get to know the personalities of each character as you progress. The story is full of twists, so you’ll always be guessing who to trust and what might happen next. Doublequote Studio has created a rich world that feels both futuristic and grounded in the gritty reality of a tech-obsessed society.

Here’s a quick look at what makes it all special:

Heists: Every mission is more than just a job—it’s a test of strategy and skill. Plan carefully because every choice could change the story.

Story: HeistGeist follows a gripping, original cyberpunk tale set in a very cool, reimagined Central Europe. The full voice cast brings every character to life.

Combat: Engage in card-based battles that demand quick thinking and powerful combos. It’s all about timing and strategy!

RPG Elements: Build your character by constructing a deck that fits your style. Install cyberware to boost your abilities and give you the edge.

Hacking: Jump into cyberspace and take on grid-based hacking challenges. Install programs and run viruses to crack systems and get to the good stuff.

If you’re into story-driven games that mix cyberpunk RPG elements, card battles, and a fresh hacking mechanic, then HeistGeist is your next go-to. Launch into it on Steam, build your perfect deck, and see if you’ve got what it takes to survive the future. Which you can play now on Linux, Mac, and Windows PC.

[therianheartbreaker]

reinstalling windows on my computer. i tried to make linux work and it was genuinely alright for a while, but just like I guessed- the amount of incompatible things grew and grew until I was so damn annoyed by it all I just gave up.

game dev? 2-3 working ones.

music making? just a couple working softwares that I wanted to use.

vr? would have been a day long troubleshooting nightmare to make work.

modding games? good luck pal.

just... ugh. linux is trying to hard to make it all work out but the unfortunate reality is that if developers arent trying then you're just not gonna have software that works properly. dont even get me started on a software having a linux version... but it only works on ubuntu.

i guess if nothing else this was a valuable learning experience and if we all do end up getting to drop windows at some point I'll be much more prepared. for now, im headed back into windows and putting 200 mods on skyrim, and using fl studio, and downloading unreal engine, and I'm gonna play half life alyx on my vr headset again.

[christanworkshop]

The Legendary ThinkPad T480s

I recently got myself an old Lenovo ThinkPad T480s for just $230—a real steal for this iconic machine. The model I got had the i7-8650u and 16GB RAM. Even though it’s about 7 years old, the ThinkPad T480s still holds legendary status among laptop enthusiasts. A quick search on YouTube and you will find a ton of recent videos praising its robust build, exceptional keyboard, and solid performance. There's almost a cult like following for this ThinkPad.

Right after purchasing, I opened up the laptop for some essential maintenance. I disassembled the heat sink/heat pipe/fan assembly and thoroughly cleaned the fan with a brush and compressed air duster. After cleaning off the old thermal paste from the heat sink and CPU using IPA, I reapplied some Kryonaut Thermal Grizzly paste to ensure optimal cooling performance.

Over the next two days, I set it up with Ubuntu and installed a bunch of development tools like Visual Studio Code, Python, Jupyter Notebook, and Arduino IDE. Additionally, I configured VirtualBox to run a Windows 10 Pro VM for flexibility.

To enhance seamless workflow between my ThinkPad and Mac, I configured Syncthing for effortless file synchronization and CopyQ for shared clipboard functionality. For backup, I am using Timeshift for system snapshots and Déjà Dup for user files. Installed Gnome Sushi and Imagemagick to make file preview work like on a Mac. It's also nice that the Ubuntu dock can be configured to look similar to a Mac.

On top of that, I also installed xremap to do some key remapping for things like copy, paste, quit, etc. to make Ubuntu work more like a Mac, just because the Mac is my main machine and all those key strokes are like muscle memory already. Keep having to change as I switch between using the 2 was a real pain.

That’s it, a brand new old ThinkPad. The ThinkPad T480s remains a fantastic laptop even after all these years, providing stellar performance and an exceptional Linux experience. It’s the perfect budget-friendly yet powerful laptop for developers, makers, and Linux enthusiasts alike.

Below are some videos you can check out:

[master-wwweb]

Guía de Informática -Grado 10

Hola chicos, subo la con la información de la clase.

Fecha: marzo 18 de 2024

Tema:

Reto Integrador: 1.        Evidenciar una página web interactiva y temática con contenido multimedia (según las indicaciones dadas previamente en sala)

2.           Crear una campaña sobre “Las Herramientas TIC y su importancia” infórmese y elabore la actividad en su página

Entrega: ____10 de ___ abril de 2024 (cualquier duda, consultar con su docente a tiempo, no el día que debe entregar)

Reto: Escoja uno de los siguientes sitios para elaborar su sitio web

•

     WIX

•    BLOGSPOT O BLOGGER

•    TUMBLR

•    WEBNODE

•    WEEBLY

•    WORDPRESS

•    MÉDIUM

•    OTROS

Si ya tiene uno, súbale contenido temático (temático significa que sea netamente académico enfocado a TECNOLOGIA E INFORMATICA).  

En su blog deben ir apareciendo semana a semana sus informes sobre la evidencia final

-Videos de la elaboración de su evidencia final (mientras realizan la actividad usted puede grabar y/o tomar fotos para ir evidenciando su proceso.

Nota: Cualquier duda, inquietud comunicármela a tiempo.  Quedo pendiente    

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-Programas operativos y aplicativos

Desde la perspectiva de la informática, un programa de aplicación consiste en una clase de software que se diseña con el fin de que para el usuario sea más sencilla la realización de un determinado trabajo. Esta particularidad lo distingue del resto de los programas, entre los cuales se pueden citar a los sistemas operativos.

-Los sistemas operativos son los que permiten el funcionamiento de la computadora, existen varios, tales como (Microsoft Windows - Mac OS X - GNU/Linux – UNIX – Solaris – FreeBSD - OpenBSD: Sistema operativo libre, - Google Chrome OS - Debian – Ubuntu – Mandriva – Sabayon – Fedora - Linpus Linux - Haiku (BeOS)

- Lenguajes de programación (aquellos que dan las herramientas necesarias para desarrollar los programas informáticos en general) y las utilidades (pensadas para realizar acciones de mantenimiento y tareas generales). Tales como (Java - C.- Python.- C++ - C# - Visual Basic. - JavaScript. – Php – Swift – SQL

El software es el elemento intangible y lógico que forma parte de una computadora. Es decir (Los programas se presentan como herramientas para mejorar tu desempeño. Algunos ejemplos de estos programas o aplicaciones son los procesadores de texto, como Microsoft Word; las hojas de cálculo, como Excel; y las bases de datos, como Microsoft Access.)

El hardware, en cambio, es el componente material y físico. Se dice que los sistemas operativos constituyen el lazo que une al software con el hardware.

En ocasiones, los programas de aplicación son diseñados a medida, es decir, según las necesidades y pretensiones de cada usuario. Por eso, el software permite resolver dificultades específicas. En otros casos, se trata de paquetes integrados que solucionan problemas generales e incluyen múltiples aplicaciones. Por ejemplo, un paquete de oficina combina aplicaciones como procesadores de textos y hojas de cálculo.

10. Herramientas para crear maquetas de interfaz de usuario en aplicaciones de software

Balsamiq Mockups. Balsamiq Mockups es una aplicación es muy divertida y sencilla de usar.

Mockingbird.

Mockup Builder.

MockFlow.

HotGloo.

Invision.

JustProto.

Proto.io.

Framer

Origami Studios

InVision

Reto  autónomo: Elabore una presentación en PowerPoint o video explicativo, sobre los programas operativos y aplicativos para el manejo de registros, textos, diagramas, figuras, planos constructivos, maquetas, modelos y prototipos con herramientas informáticas.

INFORME FINAL

El docente explica a sus estudiantes como elaborar su informe final, con enlaces directos a las actividades solicitadas durante el periodo.

Nota: También dejo la guía para descarga