Flipper One looks like the sort of Linux hardware project that could either become legendary or collapse under the weight of its own ambition. The folks behind Flipper Zero are trying to build a truly open Linux cyberdeck with upstream kernel support, modular M.2 expansion, Wi-Fi 6E, dual Ethernet, local AI, and a UI actually designed for small screens instead of forcing KDE onto tiny displays.

So I'm studying programming in Poland, and I wanna buy a laptop mostly for school use and to also program at home, I want to put Arch + Hyprland on it, and maybe some light gaming so I don't think I need a dedicated GPU, what's the best option for up to $1500?

Default theme, zzz-icewm, redmond and ubuntu regular size 11 fonts. 112% scaling. 15' screen laptop.

I installed the Linux kernel v7.0.4 after I installed AntiX26 to get my wifi up and running. Lenovo Ideapad slim 3; modern laptop, but a little weak. I'm very happy with my setup;

I had to boot the live image with kernel v6.x.x just to get my keyboard working. But after the main install of the Antix26 system, I then installed kernel v7.0.4.

This is how I did it; follow these steps to get wifi + kernel 7.0.4:

(before you start, make sure that your wifi card is not soft-blocked(Airplane mode): type in your terminal: rfkill list, if its blocked try to unblock by: sudo rfkill unblock all, or the shortcut for airplane mode on your keyboard. Is your wifi working now? if not, continue. )

1. Find a way to connect to the internet. I had to use internet through USB-cable from my Phone.
2. Install the firmware-mediatek driver, by typing this in the terminal: sudo apt install firmware-mediatek, then reboot. But just to be sure you can also install: firmware-misc-nonfree and/or firmware-linux-nonfree. Check what kind of wifi card you have. Google Ai is very helpful finding out stuff for you, and what kind of drivers you need to install. (at this step you can try a reboot your laptop and see if you can get wifi working, if not continue to next step.)
3. Then install the linux-image-7.0.4+deb13 from the debian backports, it should also install the dependencies for you, so please check that before you continue. After the new kernel is installed, write in the terminal: sudo update-grub, now you can reboot into your fresh kernel and wifi should be working.

linux-image-7.0.4+deb13 <your cpu type>, please double check that it also installing dependencies. It should do it for you. Remember sudo update-grub after the install.

(firmware-mediatek did not work for me while using kernel 6.x.x, but after the 7.0.4 update wifi started working.)

Quality of life, 100% screen brightness after every reboot and fix screen tearing:

.desktop-session, startup file. This is what it looks like at the bottom. Continue reading for where to find it:

I also added these two lines at the bottom of my startup config file. You will find it in Control Centre -> Session -> Users Desktop-session ( text file from .desktop-session, startup.) Remember to save after changes:

backlight-brightness -s 100 &

xrandr --output eDP --set TearFree on &

One is to get 100% backlight on my laptop after every reboot so I dont have to adjust it every time, and the other one is for removing screen tearing. But before you add xrandr to your startup file: run xrandr in the terminal to check if you have eDP or some other screen type. Terminal command: xrandr <press enter>. Just place your screen type instead of eDP in the startup command as I have written above. Remember to save your file and reboot. This is my screen type from the terminal:

https://preview.redd.it/6gkmcpy41y0h1.jpg?width=761&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0c24a067191a6409350d7092d188d4162914159c

To check if TearFree is running after a reboot, just write in your terminal: xrandr --verbose | grep TearFree .. it should say TearFree: on, and you should notice it when you scroll up and down on websites that screen tearing is gone.

Quality of life 2, show battery info:

Now you have to open another text file!

If you want to see your battery %, just open Control Centre -> Configure Conky -> And find the line that says something like this (should be at the bottom):

#Battery: ${battery_percent BAT0}% ${alignr}${color8}${battery_bar 8,70 BAT0}

... and just remove the # and save file. You will now see your battery % on your desktop. Now you're done!

Continue reading for setting up theme, scaling, touchpad and fonts ...

Now I recommend that you scale up your fonts DPI in your control centre. I have mine set at 1.17:

This is my dpi settings 15' laptop

My other settings for Look and Feel:

Redmond and change font to Ubuntu regular size 11

Full hinting; but you could also try slight or medium. Try whats best for you.

Select default theme

And for my touchpad mouse sensitivity. Go to Control Centre -> Hardware -> Mouse -> Select touchpad(rolldown menu) -> then a window like this will pop up. Remember to check mark before Applying:

Touchpad mouse sensitivity

ROXTerm font. Go to Preferences -&gt; Configuration Manager -&gt; Select Default, press edit -&gt; Font: Noto Mono Regular, Size: 11

Extra tip 1: Firefox default scaling is set to 110% in the settings, but personal preference.

Extra tip 2: Shortcut for taking a screenshot is FN+S on my keyboard. Could be different on your laptop.

This was very fun; will be my main distro on my laptop. Everything just works. No fuzz. Sharp fonts, sharp theme, bluetooth-audio on my headset, wifi and low ram usage! :)

Hi!

I'm looking for old Realtek wifi cards and USB adapters for my hobby, which is fixing/improving their Linux drivers:

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/log/?h=v7.1-rc2&qt=author&q=rtl8821cerfe2

If you're in the EU (+ Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein?) and you have a device you want to donate, please message me here or email me. (You can find my email address in any of the commits listed at the link above.)

Some of these devices can still be bought today, so money can help too.

• RTL8188SU / RTL8191SU / RTL8192SU

  These USB adapters used to be supported by the r8712u module, but it was removed in kernel 6.13 because it used outdated APIs and no one did anything about that for years. r8712u probably can't support WPA3, so the goal is to add support for this chip to rtlwifi, which already supports the PCIe version.

• RTL8191SE / RTL8192SE

• RTL8723AE

• RTL8192CE

• RTL8192DE

• RTL8723BE

• RTL8192EE / RTL8192EEBT

• RTL8723AU

  This was a special module used in some Lenovo Yoga laptops. I'm hoping it can be hooked up to a USB cable, since it uses USB to communicate with the system.

• RTL8188CUS

  Lots of USB adapters used this chip but they're out of stock now.

• RTL8192DU with two USB interfaces ("bNumInterfaces 2" in lsusb)

  This is an unusual USB adapter that can work in both the 2.4 GHz band and the 5 GHz band at the same time. Products that likely have this variant of the chip: SAPIDO AU-5125, SAPIDO AU-5015, Planex GW-USFang300, Planex GW-USDual300, Planex GW-USUltra300.

Newer devices are also welcome:

• RTL8821CU (wifi + bluetooth) / RTL8822BU (wifi + bluetooth) / RTL8812CU (wifi only)

  These would be just to have a complete collection, as I already have other versions of these chips.

• RTL8723DE

• RTL8821CE

• RTL8822BE

• RTL8814AE

  As far as I can tell this is only found in desktop cards, which I can't use unless it's actually a mini PCIe card in an adapter.

• RTL8852AE

• RTL8852BE

• RTL8852CE

• RTL8922AE

• RTL8922DE

My question is, installing Asahi Linux on M1 or M2 Mac minis and using it as a desktop computer is a good decision? Is there any hassle during installation or when using it? Any advice, experience, or other alternatives?

I’m considering getting an x60 to libreboot myself to use as a server/ tor relay nothing heavy.

I was wondering if I could get a review from people who have used it before recently.

I daily drive an x200 so I’m not alien to older hardware.

Just got quoted another $5000 to finalise firmware on a prototype I'm building. Already spent $500 on ACPI and EFI fixes. This kind of cost only makes sense if you're spreading it across a batch, completely impractical for an individual. Probably part of the reason affordable Linux hardware is so rare.

I have an old laptop that died, but I still have:
16GB RAM
256GB SSD
512GB HDD

I’m tired of waiting for Mac mini, I want a Linux machine for software development side projects and all time running agents. No gaming.

I’m confused about how desktop builds work though. Do I just buy a CPU? Or do I need a full PC/motherboard? Do I need a dedicated GPU or are integrated graphics enough for Linux/dev work?

I’ve been looking at mini PCs / barebones systems where I can reuse laptop RAM and storage. Is that the best route, or should I build a normal desktop instead?

Hello everyone. i've recently switched to Debian 13 on my desktop because it was finally time to get rid of Windows.

However, my uni notebook is still a Surface Pro 9 (i7-1265U, 16GB RAM), . It's farily new (<2 yrs) and I was reluctant to switch, but since Windows is feeling worse by the minute and Linux support on the Surface is subpar from what I've gathered, I'd rather sell it and use that to get a 2-in-1 which properly supports Debian instead.

Could someone tell me what the currently recommended 2-in-1's are, which are somewhat on the same level as my Surface? Ideally below 1200€, and available in the EU. If possible, I'd also prefer AMD over Intel & Nvidia.

Thank you!

TLDR: Last year I bought an M1 Pro Macbook Pro, which is fantastic hardware, but since I got more into Linux and customization. Now I'm considering selling the Mac and going for some ThinkPad / Framework. But I fear having worse hardware and regretting it.

So, last year I bought second hand M1 Pro 14" Macbook Pro 16GB for what I consider a really nice price of around 1000€. As a long time Windows user at that time with some casual WSL and dualbooting to Linux, coming from a mid spec Lenovo Gaming Ideapad from around 2018 (i5, GTX1650) the Mac felt like a revolution to me. I work in a creative professional industry and having that kind of power with such battery life and the best display I have ever seen in my life seems magical to this day, the only slight bottle neck being the GPU performance which is a little behind for todays cutting edge (But I know that for stuff like Blender renders desktop will always be better and I do not want my laptop to fulfill this).

But since my old gaming laptop has been laying around with its inferior portability and I now had a new stable machine to work on I decided to wipe windows and install Linux on it to use it as my home desktop for games and hobby programming. And the experience has been amazing (I have had experience already with Linux, installing stuff like Arch and Debian, messing stuff up this time I chose Fedora) And now I can't stop loving this system, it games well, it is hackable and customizable, when something bugs me I get into a rabbit hole and fix it and learn stuff, I can play with DE's and nowadays I can even run some professional software I need through Wine. For serious work that hardware is just too slow for me and sucks as a portable laptop and has mediocre screen.

My mind has now been infected with the Linux freedom candy, I have the apple ecosystem (with Iphone and Apple TV) working, I like its features and almost everything I need for my professional needs is mostly fulfilled with the MacBook, but whenever I hit a wall in the ability to fix or configure my system because of apples design decisions I am furious. To be honest it is still miles better that when I was on windows, at least MacOs is UNIX and I don't need to learn two shell environments. To give an example: I am not able to remove a title bar which always slides down from the top in Firefox when I am in full screen, just because apple has decided to always shove the 3 buttons in my face, while in theirs Safari this is working as expected, but I do not want to use Safari...
Whenever I encounter some problem like this it is always "install an app for that" or "modify some system stuff in a really hacky way" which feels horribly wrong and unstable. My inner child which likes to tinker is fed up with the constant friction, even though MacOs is sufficient for productive work.

Last think to mention is that I am considering investing into a nice desktop setup in the near future for render heavy lifting, local AI and gaming.

So with this anamnesis out of my way, my current intrusive thoughts/dilemma is that I could sell my Macbook for around 800€ and invest that money into a laptop which would be running Linux, like Framework or mid tear second hand ThinkPad. But I really do not wish to sacrifice portability for the laptop and with that I fear that in the 1000€ price range the hardware wont be enough for my creative professional work, so then I would have to also rely much more on the desktop setup, which I want to get in the future. I will be grateful for your experience with laptops around this price range in the year 2026, as my last unit of measure is that old gaming laptop.

My second option would be to sell the Mac and use that money together with the money I am saving towards the desktop to buy some really nice modern laptop like the new Framework pro.
But I feel that would be falling into the trap of thinking that laptops should do what desktops are made for, and also I fear relying on cutting edge hardware to be my only device in the terms of Linux stability and Wine translations I need to do.

My third options is to get rid of the the old gaming laptop (which will happen sooner or later) and use the scrap money to buy some cheap Thinkpad like the T480 or T14 whichever generation i get my hands on. Just to satisfy my tinkerer Linux craving needs. And I bite the bullet and keep the Macbook for my professional work until the point when I invest in a nice Desktop setup and maybe I would be able to just use that dirt cheap laptop to ssh and remote into the powerfull desktop(Anyone have experience with that?). Or I continue to live in the two OS schizophrenia between my laptop and Desktop. (Or maybe even triple since having to use windows time to time is inevitable).
But what I fear in this scenario is that I quickly find out that these 6 - 10 years old ThinkPads laptops made for bussiness excel will feel horrible to use and that it only seems attractive because of the old ThinkPad overhype created by hobbyist or hardcore programmers who mainly use TUI and manipulate text files (not to be looking down on people who make do with what they have), myself I am in the weeds of making my UIs as minimal and not needlessly taxing when on Linux.

I just feel like I am missing a scale or proper frame of reference to know how will these different price brackets of hardware feel like to use on daily basis, because my sense in this field has been completely obliterated by using Apple Silicon and even though the MacBook has mostly held its value it still seems like its whole package of screen, body, speakers, and silicon has even greater premium value for me, I just hate the thought of staying on MacOs and having to dealing with its boundaries and roadblock it gives towards adopting open software stacks and non apple services.

I will be grateful for experiences of people facing similar dilemmas or of those who often have access to different hardware to compare and are able to capture the feeling of being on something cutting edge vs mid to low level when on Linux. Maybe it all vibes after all, and maybe I just tend to obsess about changing hardware for the chase of having "the other"...

My market area is central Europe, but I am not looking for straight up purchase recommendations, more I wish to spark discussion about how people navigate these decisions.

PS-1: I know Asahi Linux is a thing, but considering my need for stability, finding support and thinking about my time as investment towards something which will always be jeopardised by Apple in the future, this seems like a dead end to me.
PS-2: I do not consider desktop IO like monitors and keyboard etc. as a cost factor, I already have those.

Hi,

I’m running NixOS on a laptop with a MediaTek MT7921 (USB ID 13d3:3563). I’m debugging a Bluetooth regression affecting this device across multiple kernel versions.

Problem

Bluetooth is detected but does not initialize correctly on certain kernel versions.

Symptoms:

• hci0 exists but is unusable
• BD address shows 00:00:00:00:00:00
• no Bluetooth controller visible in bluetoothctl
• hciconfig shows empty features and DOWN state
• dmesg error: Failed to send wmt func ctrl (-22)

WiFi (mt7921e) works normally.

What I tested

• Kernel 7.0.5 → Bluetooth works
• Kernel 7.0.8 → Bluetooth breaks
• Kernel 6.18.28 → Bluetooth works
• Kernel 6.18.31 → Bluetooth breaks
• Downgrading kernel does not reliably fix the issue once broken
• Full power cycle (shutdown)
• Reloading btusb / btmtk
• No missing firmware errors in dmesg

System: NixOS (nixpkgs-managed kernels, reproducible configuration)

Question

Is this a known regression or instability in the MediaTek MT7921 Bluetooth driver (btmtk) across recent Linux kernel versions?

Is there a recommended stable kernel / firmware combination for this chipset?

Any known workaround besides pinning a specific working kernel version?

Thanks

Hi all,

I’m running Arch Linux and I’m trying to diagnose a networking issue with my onboard Realtek RTL8125 2.5GbE NIC.

Motherboard:

- MSI MAG B650 Tomahawk WiFi

The problem:

-After reboot, internet speed is normal (~900 Mbps)

-After some hours of uptime, download/upload speed degrades badly (~50 Mbps or even lower)

-Reboot immediately restores full speed

-Latency/ping stays mostly fine

-No obvious packet loss

-Happens on Ethernet only

-This started only recently. I didn’t intentionally change anything major besides normal Arch updates.

Motherboard NIC:

-RTL8125 2.5GbE Controller

Originally using:

-r8169

I also tested:

-r8168-dkms

and even:

-r8125-dkms

but the issue still happens.

When degraded:

-Internet becomes extremely slow

-iperf3 to another LAN machine collapses hard

-TCP retransmits become very high

-But ping to router and internet remains stable

Example:

ping 192.168.1.1

Stable:

~0.3–0.7 ms

0% packet loss

ping 1.1.1.1

Also stable:

~10–11 ms

0% packet loss

So latency is fine while throughput dies.

iperf3 example during degraded state:

[ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 896 KBytes 7.33 Mbits/sec 61 retr

[ 5] 1.00-2.00 sec 512 KBytes 4.19 Mbits/sec 17 retr

...

[ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 6.75 MBytes 5.66 Mbits/sec 146 retr

So retransmits explode under load.

Things I already tested:

Drivers:

-r8169

-r8168-dkms

-r8125-dkms

No real improvement.

Offloads disabled:

sudo ethtool -K enp12s0 gro off gso off tso off

No change.

IRQ balancing:

Installed and enabled:

sudo pacman -S irqbalance

sudo systemctl enable --now irqbalance

NIC interrupt was originally mostly pinned to one CPU core.

After tweaking IRQ affinity + enabling RPS, interrupts spread a little more across CPUs, but issue still happens eventually.

RPS enabled:

for f in /sys/class/net/enp12s0/queues/rx-*/rps_cpus; do

echo ffffffff | sudo tee $f

done

Still degrades after some uptime.

EEE already disabled:

EEE status: disabled

qdisc:

Tried:

fq_codel

pfifo_fast

No difference

.

Other possibly relevant info:

This machine also runs:

-Docker

-k3s

-multiple bridges/veth interfaces

Interfaces include:

-docker0

-cni0

-flannel.1

-many veth devices

But even after stopping Docker + k3s, degraded throughput remained.

Things I noticed:

During normal operation:

ethtool enp12s0

shows:

Speed: 1000Mb/s

Duplex: Full

Link detected: yes

No link flaps.

Also:

ip -s link show enp12s0

shows almost no actual errors.

Question:

Has anyone seen:

RTL8125 gradually degrading throughput over uptime on Linux?

r8169/r8168/r8125 all behaving similarly?

interrupt/softirq saturation causing long-term throughput collapse?

Any ideas for deeper debugging would be appreciated because I’m running out of things to test.

Edit: Additional diagnostic data (during issue / monitoring):

rx_missed: 0 rx_mac_missed: 2243 (and increasing over time)

I also tried disabling ASPM (pcie_aspm=off) and it did not solve the issue.

I collected more low-level data while the issue is occurring:

ethtool -S shows rx_missed remains relatively low but steadily increases over time under load rx_mac_missed increases gradually during sustained traffic /proc/net/softnet_stat shows non-zero drops in column 2 across multiple CPUs, indicating softnet backlog drops rather than NIC-level errors Disabling Docker and k3s does not eliminate the issue Interrupt distribution was initially heavily skewed to a single CPU core, but improving IRQ affinity + enabling RPS temporarily restores full throughput However, performance still degrades again after some uptime even with RPS enabled

i had a budget from my company $2000 to buy laptop. any recommedation what laptop should i buy? ram must be 32gb and lightweight

previouslly i am using lenovo yoga i7 and using debian 12 xfce. mostly using as workstation for coding, docker and vm. never using the touchscreen because i dont really need it.

honestly it's been great because it's light and has good battery. i am thinking of buy similiar laptop like lenovo yoga but without touchscreen.

thanks

I have a strict budget of max 1000euros. A MacBook Air M5 looks lightweight, with high performance and good design. I hate Apple's ecosystem and I was always dual booting windows/linux. Give me a good option so that I won't sin.

Edit - I'll use it for everything: Take it to conferences, Sage math, Latex, Browsing, reading, photography editing (raw files), the only game I play is efootball (PC version- I know I can't play it on the mac).

I got a Tuf Gaming x870e-plus Wifi 7 motherboard but sometime the USB stop working. It is random when they suddenly stop working and I need to restart the computer to get them to fucntion again. Does anyone know what would cause this? The ram is Team T-Force Delta RGB 32GB, CPU is AMD Ryzen 9600X, power supply is MAG A1000GLS, running under Linus OS (Linux Mint with 7 kernel). The bios is the latest stable (2202). Thanks for any help and suggestions.

Hi everyone, I’m planning to migrate from Zorin OS to CachyOS soon. I’ve heard a lot of great things about its gaming performance and overall speed, but I wanted to ask how good it is for daily use and software development.

I mainly do web development with Node.js, Vite and PostgreSQL, and I’m also interested in learning Docker more seriously. My laptop is a Predator Helios Neo 16 with an NVIDIA RTX 4060, so I’d also like to know how the experience is with NVIDIA drivers and general stability.

For those who use CachyOS as their main distro, how has your experience been for programming, stability and everyday usage?

Now, before i start, i will say that the same issue existed on windows, i switched to linux for better troubleshooting and hoped that it is a win bug and will get fixed automatically, that did not happen.

As mentioned, bluetooth just doesnt work, it says that no bluetooth adapter is detected

AMD 7600X AMD 9070 CachyOS KDE Desktop Everything is upto date

Please ask me any questions and ill answer them asap

These are the things that i tried, with the assistance of an AI, so take it with a grain of sal

Chip: Realtek RTW8852CE (PCIe WiFi 6 + BT combo) on CachyOS kernel 7.0.8

- Installed bluez/bluez-utils, enabled bluetooth.service — service skipped, no HCI device
- modprobe btusb — loaded but no controller found
- Checked firmware — only WiFi blobs present (rtw8852c_fw*.bin), no BT blob (rtw8852c_bt.bin)
- linux-firmware 1:20260410-1 already installed — BT blob for 8852CE simply not included
- rfkill list — BT doesn't appear at all, OS has zero awareness of it
- No rtw89 BT submodule in lsmod whatsoever