Brickfrog

Is there something I am missing, or does it really just come down to people not wanting software that isn’t “cutting edge” release?

It might just be that, people tend to gravitate to the next shiny new thing. But you’re right, even when the application repos skew a bit older they’re not really that old. And technically nothing is stopping you from running a more up-to-date application via flatpak, appimage, or just compiling directly. I think it’s perfect for people looking for a more vanilla boring experience with the standard DE environments (GNOME, KDE, etc.).

I will say for total noobs another distro is maybe more friendlier, more polished installer, etc… before settling on Debian I was happily using Ubuntu which felt easier for someone still getting used to Linux. But I always knew it was Debian based which made me curious about eventually just running Debian itself… nowadays Debian is my main and has been great.

That’s weird, maybe an update broke something? What I would maybe do is uninstall Xrdp (and maybe remove/rename the old config files just in case), then re-install and configure it. From there if it’s still not working try to see what’s showing up in the log files maybe.

I did notice that Xrdp requires some extra configuration to work properly with Linux Mint Cinnamon, you apparently need to create a .xsession file in the home folder of whichever user(s) you’re trying to remote into. I’m not on Linux Mint myself but maybe searching around will give you some tips e.g. this seems like a good rundown https://gist.github.com/ParkWardRR/2ab9b5d41bbaceca8471d591755a1898

EDIT: You probably already know this from using it before but for RDP on Linux you’d need to remote into a user that is not already logged in… it’s not like in Windows when you can RDP into any user regardless if they’re already logged in or not.

Yup, been using Xrdp in a Debian + GNOME Wayland setup without issue.

I’ve also used GNOME’s built in Remote Desktop (RDP) with Wayland. KDE’s own RDP should work with Wayland too but I haven’t tested that one yet.

RDP (the same protocol Windows Remote Desktop uses) works fine on Linux. I’d suggest investigating why that suddenly stopped working for you.

For what it’s worth Xrdp seems to work well on Linux for enabling a RDP Remote Desktop server… I suspect you are / were(?) already using Xrdp and just need to figure out why it stopped working.

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Funny enough I wasn’t too sure what this was about either, figured it was about Google’s AI or maybe it was a protocol for decentralized cryptocurrency blockchain tech. The Gemini cryptocurrency exchange has been around since 2014 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(cryptocurrency_exchange)).

There’s just too many things named Gemini.

You already tested with a standard Windows 10/11 install ISO? Put that on a bootable USB along with your exe but instead of installing you go into the recovery options and should see a way to get to the cmd prompt where you can test run that .exe. It might have the same results as Windows PE but it’s worth a try and downloading the Windows ISO is free anyway.

Worst case if you have a spare HDD/SSD you can put that into your system, temporarily install Windows 10/11 onto it (I don’t think you even need to worry about activation), run your .exe, then shutdown and swap your drives back to your normal setup and be done with it.

But yeah I get what you’re saying, ideally there’s a better way but I’m not too sure what else to suggest within Linux itself.

A little research got me to a “systemrescue” iso and that one worked fine. The live environment fired up and I was able to save all my data by mounting the partition via terminal into /mnt/mountfolder/.

Nice. I always keep an ISO of systemrescue on a bootable USB for these occasions, it’s gotten me out of jams in both Windows and Linux situations.

Not sure what to make of your issue with Ubuntu stopping from working, including the live boot, only for it to work again for you in the end. My hunch is wonky hardware but can’t really say.

I don’t know about “best” but on Android I’ve been using the K-9 mail app for years without problems. Supports multiple email accounts as well as standard IMAP/SMTP email protocols which is all I really need. The project was merged with Thunderbird so now it’s Thunderbird for Android.

source: https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbird-android

Will be curious what solution you come up with. I tried to do this with my current Debian installation but never quite got it to boot off the RAID-1 array. In the end just went without RAID on the drive with Debian installed, maybe will re-attempt next time I do an OS install. I do have mdadm RAID-1 working normally for my data drives, just not the boot drive… you technically could just do that if you want to have your RAID-1 data drives separate from your OS boot drive.

Can’t comment on the Calameres installer but the regular Debian installer does detect RAID configurations from other mdadm setups. So you could either create your RAID-1 configuration in the shell during the Debian install or even create it in another Linux boot shell before jumping into the Debian installer. e.g. booting any live Linux with mdadm in it, configure the RAID-1 there, then boot into the Debian installer - the Debian installer will know there’s a prior RAID-1 on those disks and allow you to proceed with installing on the array if you wanted.

What tripped me up afterwards was trying to get it to boot off that RAID-1 afterwards, that part is not so straightforward. The link in the other comment does go into that so maybe it’ll helpful.

They have a reputation for deleting free accounts. If you plan to use Tuta for more than a few months be sure to use their paid plans, not free.

e.g. https://lemmy.ml/post/41480556

Some ideas for the future

Xrdp fail… plain and simple…

Xrdp usually works fine, you should try to find any specific error messages or logs. Xrdp also runs a service so you could also see if the service itself is running or what it’s status is (systemctl status xrdp).

For me Xrdp did fail when I initially tried to run it. I don’t remember the exact error being produced but there was something wrong with the port number xrdp wanted to use… in the end I had to stop the service, edit /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini and set the port to a specific port number without using vsock. xrdp by default was set to use vsock ports which wasn’t working for for me.

Set up SSH on it and make sure you’re able to connect into it while it works normally, that way when the issue occurs you can do a quick test to see if the system itself is still up and running.

I’m not on Linux Mint / Cinnamon but I’ve occasionally seen GNOME sort of hang/freeze so the screen display becomes non-responsive. After a couple of times of that happening I ended up setting up SSH on the system and configured a SSH client on my phone so I can do a SSH connection into the desktop and force-logout my user (which apparently fixes the issue and brings my main desktop back to a normal login screen). I haven’t quite figured out if it’s Gnome issues or something to do with my Nvidia GPU… though with Linux if Nvidia is involved then it’s usually Nvidia, ugh.

Also if you’re physically at the computer when it happens try unplugging/replugging in the monitor cable, maybe there’s something wonky going on there or with the display connection.

Just some ideas to help you along :)

Do I need to run a virtual machine with win11?

Yes this definitely works fine. QEMU with Virt-Manager works well, you can set up as many versions of Windows as you like. Other people use VirtualBox, VMWare Workstation, etc. These all work well enough to run Windows + standard apps like MS Office or whatever you need.

Debian by default uses the Nouveau open source driver for Nvidia GPUs and that driver does support Pascal. Debian installations will continue to work just fine even without Nvidia’s development support.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouveau_(software)

I don’t know if that’s something that can be done on Arch but in theory you can test the fallback Intel driver vs Nouveau and see which fallback you prefer.

Nouveau works well for day-to-day use and works with Wayland. I’m not a hardcore gamer but have played low-mid range Steam games without issue. I suspect it may not do well playing high end AAA games but then again if you’re rocking a Pascal era GPU it’s unlikely you’ve been playing those type of games anyway.

EDIT: Just to add, pretty sure the built in Intel iGPU on your laptop is more power efficient vs the Nvidia GPU so it may be worthwhile to disable the Nvidia GPU entirely rather than worrying about software drivers.

I’ve been using Debian with the default GNOME on an old laptop and main desktop and have been very happy with it. Coming from Windows I love that it’s way simpler and I don’t need to set a million options.

But remember the thing with Linux is you’re not locked into anything - So try GNOME or XFCE for a few weeks, then if you still want something else install and switch over to another desktop environment. You could even install all these desktop environments during the Debian install itself and just keep switching every time you log in.

Just to be sure, did you already test that the port is actually open and forwarded? e.g. with your torrent client running browse to a port test website like https://canyouseeme.org/ , https://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/open-ports/ , etc. put in your torrent client’s incoming port and check if the website can “see” your open port at your torrent client.

And the ISP (or router) itself isn’t doing anything weird to block torrents, right? In your torrent client if you click any working public torrent, click on the Trackers tab, you should see DHT as working along with whatever open trackers are on the public torrent. In other words you won’t see anything like “waiting” something (I forget the exact message you’ll see when DHT is being blocked but it’ll definitely not be working).

EDIT: Also if it’s a new ISP with new router it might have firewall rules set up that are slowing things down, something to check.

The copy protections on Blu rays are exceptionally annoying, to the extent where there is really only one closed source software – MakeMKV – that can work around them.

Not quite, RedFox formerly SlySoft (RIP) used to market their own Blu-ray ripper and it worked quite well. What it used to do is on-the-fly decryption so you’d run it in the background and could use any other software to read the decrypted Blu-ray (e.g. using Handbrake or whatever). It did also have an option to just rip to a file IIRC. Unfortunately they randomly disappeared so their software is pretty much done. (some background on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedFox)

That aside they always a competitor, DVDFab, that still exists today. Their Passkey software is the rough equivalent of what the old RedFox/SlySoft software used to do but they also sell a standalone Blu-ray ripper if that’s more your thing (see https://www.dvdfab.cn/).

But yeah, in some ways you’re stuck with MakeMKV, DVDFab, and maybe some others (?).

I’d have to dig it out but I actually bought a Blu-ray drive a while back that was on the list of drives compatible with these rippers but honestly it’s been a few years since I’ve tried using it. Most times someone else already ripped a Blu-ray I’d be interested in.

Speaking of - If anyone knows offhand, how do people do this stuff on Linux? Does the Linux version of MakeMKV work well for this and/or are there other tools (?)

Wake on LAN is a LAN feature, not WAN, so you’d need to issue that over the local LAN there at the house. You’re going to have a hard time trying to get that working over the WAN (if that’s even possible).

The other comments mentioning a scheduled boot would be a much easier/simple solution if it works for you.

But I’ll throw this in, the super basic least tech solution to this is to open a port forward to the house’s network router. Yes, I know you don’t want to do that, but it’s probably the only network device at that house that’s actually on 24/7 right? And by all means lock it down however you like. My simple method is to open the router login to a non-standard port number, with a IP whitelist, add my own home IP address to that IP whitelist, and bam you now have access to that remote home’s router for just your IP address. Log in remotely, issue a wake on LAN via the router’s own web ui, done.

It’s perfectly reasonable to make this a bit more secure if you wanted but it gets slightly more complicated - open a non-standard port for SSH access to the remote router’s SSH port that only allows SSH login with key. Generate a SSH key and share that key with yourself, then you can log in remotely to that remote house via non-standard SSH port using the SSH key (no user/passwords). From there you’d have to see if you can issue Wake on LAN on the SSH command line, or set up a SSH tunnel from that remote LAN to yours so you can proxy into the router login page and do your Wake on LAN from there. … yes I realize this got complicated :/ But you’ve got a few things to explore given your patience for tinkering with this stuff :)

Of course much of this relies on that house’s router having any of these features to enable and configure. The main takeaway here is that Wake on LAN requires something on 24/7 at that remote LAN for you to enable remote access into and issue a Wake on LAN command within that LAN. How to actually accomplish that is the tricky bit.

When I first started using GNOME the top bar was a bit off-putting but I got used to it TBH. It’s not something I think about much nowadays.

However, you actually can move it to the side or to the bottom, and/or change it in other ways, with the dash-to-panel extension so definitely check that out if the top bar is bugging you https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1160/dash-to-panel/