linux4noobs

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pgrisell, in Easiest/best way to make bootable USB on Linux
@pgrisell@lemmy.world avatar

In Mint Xfce there’s an accessory called USB Image Writer that does the trick. I’m guessing it’s in some other distros as well.

knusprig, in Best distro to start with

Have a look at popOS or elementary, both were really low maintenance for me and offer great workflow tools.

foofiepie,

I’ve had a look through system76’ site and pop looks interesting, def a contender. Their hardware is a tad pricy. I assume like most of this the hardware is something to research carefully if you choose a distro first, compatibility, drivers, support etc.

It’s a bit of an experiment for me so I won’t be dropping a grand on some HW.

knusprig,

Yeah, I’m using the distro on a thinkpad yoga.

justjeepin,

Just use an old PC or laptop if you have one. If not install VirtualBox and give the different distros a try. It’ll run slower than if it was on actual hardware but it’ll let you try the OSes until you find something that you like.

Tarquinn2049, in if i create a symlink to a file, do programs read the file it's linked to?

While ssd’s were still expensive, I used symlinks alot to solve problems for friends where games and launchers would only put stuff on their main drive. I had a friend using a 64 gig ssd for windows 10, he had so many symlinks I ended up drawing a chart for myself so I could more easily visualize them in case anything needed to be modified or repaired later.

Most of the time they were set and forget. But every now and then they did need to be repaired, usually from user error. I do recommend keeping a hand written reminder if you plan on doing a bunch of them. Just so much nicer to have a less-fallible record of them when you do need to work on them.

lurch, in if i create a symlink to a file, do programs read the file it's linked to?

There could be a problem, if the game runs in some sort of sandbox, VM or emulator. For example, if the target of the link is outside of the environment the game can see, the link will look broken for it.

Successful_Try543, in if i create a symlink to a file, do programs read the file it's linked to?

If the permissions are correct, I assume yes, as long as the program doesn’t test if the ‘file’ is a link.

hayalci, in Could use a tl;dr guide (if there is such thing) on how to build a kernel.

You got an excellent short answer here, but for a more extensive article check out itsfoss.com/compile-linux-kernel/

Lantern, in Best distro to start with

What desktop environment were you running? I usually recommend GNOME to people who just want an OOB experience and KDE to people who want to invest into a more personal experience.

foofiepie,

I don’t actually know. It was Unity I think, whatever that is. Felt a bit, um, amateur and not very polished. Best way I can describe from what I remember.

I will be seriously researching every response here. Very grateful for the help.

Lantern,

Unity was abandoned for a few years by Ubuntu, so I’d assume it’s behind most other DEs in terms of development. Most of what users experience in a distribution is the DE, so using a bad one can ruin it.

foofiepie,

Makes sense and stacks up against my experience of it as seeming unfinished.

Is it Gnome / KDE as standard or are there other environments available?

Lantern,

Those are the two most popular DEs. There’s also MATE, LXQT, Cinnamon, XFCE, and Pantheon, but I have no experience with those.

Additionally, some users opt to use window managers in lieu of a DE, so thats also an option.

kier,

gnome is hell for people coming from windows though

Lantern,

That’s really only true of some users. Most people now are used to at least 2 OSs. GNOME acts a bit more like a mobile OS in my opinion, and KDE behaves more like a desktop OS. Ultimately if you’re moving to linux of your own volition, you’re usually going to be more tech friendly than anyone staying on windows.

To be honest, I personally disliked GNOME, but not because it didn’t match Windows. It just didn’t have the level of customization and accessibility that I expected from linux.

foofiepie,

I hate Windows with an unbridled passion. I’m forced to use it lately for work and it absolutely sucks (Win 10 anyway).

Sentau,

OP’s a long time Mac user. I don’t think he will have issues with gnome. Hell he might find it more familiar than kde

kier,

Oh, in that case, absolutely.

justjeepin,

Yep, as a Mac user for 34 years, KDE is too Windows-like and Gnome felt pretty similar to Mac.

Spider89, in I can't seem to write a Android image to an microsd (with dd) but everything works as intended when its with a Linux image -- what is going on?

What’s the output? dd?

GustavoM,
@GustavoM@lemmy.world avatar

Nothing special/unusual – it finishes running, shows me the results, and then returns me to the prompt. But lsblk returns me with zero partitions, as if no image was written in the disk.

Spider89,

Try running with “status=progress”. The may help.

recursive_recursion, in Why does grub show up like this in the BIOS?
@recursive_recursion@programming.dev avatar

I just noticed fhat you have
Secure Boot: [Enabled]
you’re gonna want to switch that off to Disabled as it’ll prevent you from booting most if not all Linux distros(Archlinux install guide note 1.4 for reference)

also that looks like the default Acer/Lenovo BIOS menu but I could be wrong, if it is the case unfortunately unless you can create BIOS firmware I don’t think there’s an wasy way to customize that menu screen

poplargrove,

Thanks for your answer. I will look into secure boot.

I don’t want to customize the boot menu. Its just that in the boot order list grub shows up as a bunch of gibberish (see right above the entry for the windows bootloader). Im worried that this might mean something is wrong. If it can get the name of the windows bootloader properly it should with grub too.

(And you guessed right, its acer)

recursive_recursion,
@recursive_recursion@programming.dev avatar

I didn’t realize at first but in the screenshot it does look like grub is showing up and as null characters(I think), unfortunately not sure why that is

hopefully someone else will have a better answer for you, so I’d recommend to try asking in your distro’s community
best of luck!

Spider89,

I’m pretty sure Ubuntu works with secure boot. Debian 12 does and since Ubuntu is based off of that, you should be fine.

As for the blank name, it could be a grub bug or bios failing to detect names.

To test if the name works, boot (but don’t install) a debian iso and see what name appears. It should show the device name.

If you choose to switch to Debian, a grub name “debian” should appear.

HotBoxghost2743,
@HotBoxghost2743@lemmy.ml avatar

Why are you using Arch as a reference for ubuntu? Also… I have secure boot on and I run arch and have for the last 5 + years it runs just fine lol

recursive_recursion,
@recursive_recursion@programming.dev avatar

Why are you using Arch as a reference for ubuntu?

Good call, I used arch as it’s the one I’m most experienced with especially when it comes to grub and bios/uefi system configuration although on reflection it seems that I need to study a bit more before trying to provide help

Also… I have secure boot on and I run arch and have for the last 5 + years it runs just fine lol

I recommended disabling secure boot as all of the machines I tried to install linux had issues when it was enabled and at the time most if not all sources online recommended disabling it, if secure boot works fine now it just means that I need to study more and revise my data

TheCheddarCheese,
@TheCheddarCheese@lemmy.world avatar

not all, ubuntu and fedora work with secure boot

wick, in Can you eli5 about package managers and flatpak for me?

When you install with a package manager you download a collection of files. Many of these files are not the program itself but are required to run the program you want, they are called dependencies. When downloaded this way all dependencies are visible to all programs. A lot of different programs use the same dependencies but sometimes different programs will need different versions of the same dependency. This can cause issues where a program tries to use an incompatible version and it’s called dependency hell.

Flatpack, snap, and appimage try to bundle the program you want with its dependencies in an isolated environment that only the program can see, so when another program that uses the same dependencies runs it cannot use the ones located in the isolated environment.

Flatpak and snap allow some shared space to avoid downloading the same files over and over again. Appimage does not and each appimage contains a completely isolated collection of everything need to run the program.

MajorHavoc, in should i set a root password if i'm the only one using the computer?

If you can share what operating system you’re using, you may get more specific answers.

breadsmasher, in if i create a symlink to a file, do programs read the file it's linked to?
@breadsmasher@lemmy.world avatar

yeah, basic answer - the symlink will act like the actual file

A read for you freecodecamp.org/…/symlink-tutorial-in-linux-how-…

Vilian, in This is the dumbest question, but where is the side panel on the menu with the shutdown option (yes I know it's not a screenshot don't bully me)

if you still didn’t discover it, try to take a bigger picture, i don’t use mint so i don’t remeber exactly where it was, but i csn remember with the bigger picture

Ramen_LadyHKG, in Wow, where are my free spaces have gone to? XD

I need to find a way to let pacman check free space before update as for now, I will use /tmp as cache

Ramen_LadyHKG, in Wow, where are my free spaces have gone to? XD

Last night, I run pacman -Syu update and let it run overnight.

it failed when I woke up, I didn’t notice it and restart for newer kernel. Then the WM (sddm) fxxked up. I try to reboot it into mutli-user mode and reinstall kde plasma. it shows bunch of corrupted libraries errors LOL.

I took some time on internet looking for solution, finally found one. Reinstall all dependencies + pacman update cache in ram. https://www.reddit.com/…/recover_system_from_crash…/

pacman -Qqdn > pkglist_deps.txt

pacman --asdeps -S $(< pkglist_deps.txt)


pacman --cachedir /tmp/pacmancache -Syu

Ramen_LadyHKG,

Error I got libxxx.so is not an ELF file xxxxx file is already exist, cannot process the update

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