this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2026
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libre
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Welcome to libre
A comm dedicated to the fight for free software with an anti-capitalist perspective.
The struggle for libre computing cannot be disentangled from other forms of socialist reform. One must be willing to reject proprietary software as fiercely as they would reject capitalism. Luckily, we are not alone.
Resources
- Free Software, Free Society provides an excellent primer in the origins and theory around free software and the GNU Project, the pioneers of the Free Software Movement.
- Switch to GNU/Linux! If you're still using Windows in
$CURRENT_YEAR, take Linux Mint for a spin. If you're ready to take the plunge, flock to Fedora! If you're a computer hobbyist and love DIY, use Arch, Gentoo, Guix or the many, many offerings out there.
- Those on Apple Silicon Macs can consult Asahi Linux for available options.
Rules
- Be on topic: Posts should be about free software and other hacktivst struggles. Topics about general tech news should be in the technology comm or programming comm. That doesn't mean all posts have to be serious though, memes are welcome!
- Avoid using misleading terms/speading misinformation: Here's a great article about what those words are. In short, try to avoid parroting common Techbro lingo and topics.
- Avoid being confrontational: People are in different stages of liberating their computing, focus on informing rather than accusing. Debatebro nonsense is not tolerated.
- All site-wide rules still apply
Artwork
- Xenia was meant to be an alternative to Tux and was created (licensed under CC0) by Alan Mackey in 1996.
- Comm icon (of Xenia the Linux mascot) was originally created by @ioletsgo
- Comm banner is a close up of "Dorlotons Degooglisons" by David Revoy (CC-BY 4.0) for Framasoft
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You should back up your files when making a major change to your computer, regardless of if it shouldn't cause problems (you should back up your files routinely anyway; hard drives fail).
On your next install, if you put /home in its own partition, that'll make distro hopping easier (you should STILL back up your shit sometimes though). This can sometimes be more jank than a clean install though, because programs put their config files in /home, and oops your new distro has an older version of whateverthefuck that gets confused by the newer config file.
Some things to check out when hopping:
Mint is a fork of Ubuntu which is a fork of Debian. I think it's worth exploring that tree.
Try things with different desktop environments. Mint is Cinnamon, but a lot of people like KDE. There's also Gnome, XFCE, random shit. You can swap these around to some extent, but a distro with KDE is going to have KDE apps pre-installed and give a more consistent KDE experience.
Try a tiling window manager! Some people love those fuckers.
Sick of Debian? Try Fedora or an Arch-based distro like Cachy or Majaro.
Arch btw? Arch boots to a black screen and expects you to install it yourself via terminal and wiki. Hilarious.
i would not recommend manjaro, the devs have fucked up way too many times
for a friendly arch i would recommend endeavourOS
the install script is pretty easy now
it's text based and ugly as sin but it will get you a working arch setup without having to punch in commands from the wiki
Yeah, I know nothing about Arch, I just took the top two Arch-based ones off distrowatch.
Listen to the Horse not the Owl on this one, folks.