Yes. The root user has access to all personal data, including your home folder.
If someone gets physical access to the PC, he can log in as root easily and mess with your data. If he just plugs in your hard drive, he can’t see anything relevant.
I wonder if the question is in reference to unlocking the root account and setting a password for it. I don’t know of any distros that actually have an unlocked root account and leave its password as empty, but I suppose its not completely impossible.
That being said, if an attacker gets physical access to your PC, its game over anyways. If your drive isn’t encrypted with something like LUKS, then they can just boot up a live USB of whatever distro they want, mount the drive, and have easy access to its contents.
Ideally if you want to protect your PC against physical attacks, you’ll at the minimum want some sort of drive encryption enabled, and preferably with Secure Boot enabled with your own keys enrolled if your machine supports it.
A lot of distros “lock” the root account, a locked account cannot be logged into. You can generally do this way say, usermod -L account_name to lock an account, or usermod -U account_name to unlock one (there are numerous ways to do).
I couldn’t remember if setting a password for an account auto-unlocked it, I believe at one point this was the case but wasn’t 100% sure.
Linux kernel is mainly C, but it does use some of the GNU extensions, and the most support is available to compile it with GCC. The kernel can be compiled with clang, but I think it’s extra work. So step 0: Get a working GCC build system.
Obtain Linux kernel source tarball and extract to a working directory. The official Linux source releases are available at kernel.org. If you are already using a Linux distribution, your distribution has some kind of way to easily get the kernel sources they use, usually through a package management tool (e.g. apt for Debian and Debian derivatives). Note that very few distributions actually distribute real “Linux” as delivered from the authoritative kernel.org source…they all maintain patchsets on top of official Linux that can be very extensive.
1a. A traditional location for source directory is /usr/src/linux-[version]. And /usr/src/linux is traditionally a symlink that points to the “currently active” kernel source.
Configure the kernel. In the kernel tree run one of the following (The actual configuration is stored in [source_path]/.config. You can copy that file from a previous kernel version to the next revision, and it will mostly work):
2a. make config. This is the original configuration script. It asks you about a 1000 yes / no / module questions one at a time. Not recommended.
2b. make menuconfig. This is the same options as make config, but in a text-based menu format, where you can use arrow keys to go back and revisit previous options. Much better.
2c. make xconfig or make gconfig or make qconfig. Same idea as menuconfig but using X Windows, GTK, or Qt, respectively, with actual windows and dialog boxes.
make clean. This deletes stale object files. This is unnecessary if you just extracted the tarball and haven’t built anything yet. There’s also make mrproper which is deeper than clean.
make.
make modules_install. This copies loadable kernel modules (in *.ko files) that were compiled during make into /lib/modules.
Optional: make install. At least this is available on my distributions sources. If you don’t do this, you just need to pull the kernel image out of [source_path]/arch/[your_arch]/boot. The filename depends on which compression was selected in configuration. For me its “bzImage”. Take this file and copy it to a location where your bootloader can get to it. Traditionally it also gets renamed to vmlinuz-[version].
Update bootloader menu entries.
Note that most distributions will also do an initramfs, which isn’t covered here. Most people don’t actually need initramfs, particularly if they compile the key early drivers into the kernel (select “yes” rather than “module”). You may need an initramfs if your root partition is encrypted and you need an early system capable of decrypting it.
Edit: Lemmy ate all my angle bracket paths, and monospace formatting.
Linux Mint. It’s a great intro to Linux. When you’ve got your feet under you — which won’t take long coming from Mac — try Debian or another distro to find the perfect fit.
Second Linux Mint. I’ve tried a bunch of distros and DE for about a decade, and have always returned to Linux Mint. It’s intuitive, the installer is easy, and the OS just works.
dd is the “standard” way pf doing and my first choice.
First google result for “linux create bootable usb” here
Less shitty guide here albeit a bit more advanced. (Gotta know what you actually want to do)
Good luck :D
EDIT: sorry this was apparently linux4noobs. Hopefully someone can give more detailed instructions, but might as well leave this here if you find any of this useful.
TL;DR: use Ventoy. Here’s my experience and how-to :)
Great you came to ask here! :)
Experienced distrohopper here.
The best way for your use case is Ventoy. You just download + execute the program. It will format your USB (I recommend 32 gb+) in a way you can boot from it AND use it as a “normal” file system. You then just copy your iso of choice on that “normal” USB.
When booting from it, it will give you a menu from which iso you want to boot from. Remember to disable secure boot and enable CSM in your UEFI, otherwise it might not get recognized. After trying or installing your Linux distro you can revert those changes in the UEFI/ BIOS if your distro supports it.
But I also use other (older) methods, like Etcher or the Fedora media writer, which overwrite the whole stick, too. They are somehow more reliable, and I’m not sure why… From time to time there are boot errors when selecting an iso. Maybe it’s because the files don’t get verified when copying, and then I have a “half copied” system.
(P.S.: Linux handles copying files different than Windows. Sometimes it says “finished” when it actually isn’t. ALWAYS eject your disks!)
The old method “just works”, and I always have one smaller USB lying around in case my boot repair iso doesn’t work.
But, especially for “trying out”, Ventoy is perfect for you. It will save you some time when trying out your ideal distro.
What are possible distro candidates you want to try and install? Just asking :) Just don’t solely place your choice on how it looks and how the first impression is.
For example, Mint might look a bit dated for some people (especially when coming from Win11), but is a fantastic distro. Garuda or EndeavourOS for example on the other hand might look modern and flashy, but will probably ruin your first impression with Linux, since they are less user friendly and more suited for more experienced users.
Remember, Linux is extremely customizable and you can exchange EVERYTHING.
But here’s my opinon, if you’re interested: maybe, just maybe, don’t use Ubuntu. Of course, do what you want. If it appeals to you, that’s great! :)
Ubuntu is often recommended as a good beginner Distro, but that’s not true anymore. That used to be a good choice a few years ago, but it is more and more hated by the community. The company developing it forces way too much of their own stuff onto new users, especially snaps (their own packaging format that sucks). In general, Ubuntu doesn’t provide you the best Linux impression anymore.
If you want to know more, then take a look into this and this video from TheLinuxExperiment.
Also, as long as your laptop isn’t super old (>10 years) it should pretty much run anything, not only those “revive your toaster-laptop”-distros. Try Mint or some other beginner-friendly-mainstream-distros too and take a look on how they perform :)
I personally love Fedora for example (just ask me why) and believe it might also be a solid beginner distro, especially since the default desktop (Gnome) looks so alien compared to Mac or Windows, you automatically assume that it doesn’t work like those two.
Thank you for your recommendations, and thanks for your detailed response in your first comment.
I see your points regarding Ubuntu, I just thought it would be a good compromise because of the amount of advice you can find on how to fix problems in Ubuntu. But I suppose much of that advice can be used for Mint as well… I haven’t tried Ubuntu in a few years, but I trust your assessment.
I currently have MX installed on a seriously old HP laptop and have been quite happy with it. I’m not sure if my mom’s laptop is older or newer, but either way it’s not by much so that’s why I immediately thought of MX for her PC as well. I’ll put Mint on the Ventoy stick as well and see which one works best.
The most obvious solution to boot time is change the HDD to an SSD. Boot time of 90 seconds seems in the ballpark for a HDD. Disk drives are slow. An SSD should also improve battery life slightly. Though, such a short battery life, like that which you described, would point to a failing battery unit. Though, that’s just speculation.
The only reason the answer wouldn’t be “yes” is if for some reason the developers of that software or game specifically wrote in a check for whether or not a certain file is a symlink and coded the software to behave differently under those circumstances. There are almost no good reasons to do that.
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