If they didn’t want me sniffing it, then they shouldn’t have made it smell EXACTLY like my first PC. Until then I’m huffing it like ashy larry hits the pipe.
I currently use Windows 10 and I’d like to try out Linux. My plan is to set up a dual boot with OpenSUSE tumbleweed and KDE Plasma. I’ve read so many different opinions about choosing a distro, compatibility with gaming and Nvidia drivers, and personal issues with the ethos of different companies like Canonical. I value...
The response you got above is the best advice. Get a second internal drive of any type and size, and install distros on that. You totally can partition your existing windows drive and install linux alongside it, but… you’ll probably screw something up along the way and bork your windows install. Use another drive and it’s much harder to do. If you want to be super safe, you can unplug your windows drive during installs and then it’s literally impossible to break your windows drive.
The other advantage is that nobody knows what distro will be right for you. That means you’ll want to distro hop - and that’s so much easier when you have another drive you can just format and start over with (and not worry about your boot loader).
To your follow up question, yes, linux can read and write to the contents of your windows drive. If you mount that drive, then you can do whatever you want to it, including deleting things that break your windows installation.
I am currently using Windows on an older HP Laptop, which I intend to replace with a Framework 16 by next summer, but my Desktop PC at home has been running EndeavourOS, my first ever Linux distro, since last summer, so I have some Arch-based experience....
Arch isn’t inherently unstable. It’s just that most users don’t maintain it properly. Tips:
learn to backup for real: rsync, borg, etc. you broke something? Just back up to that image you made right before you updated ;)
use flatpaks. It’s kind of hard to run into AUR or dependency issues if you’re as close to a base arch install as possible.
read the maintenance page and understand it. You can’t just “yay” every week and be done with it. You need to know how to handle pacnew, read the wiki for manual interventions, look for errors and warnings in the pacman log, etc. it’s not hard at all once you figure it out, but it takes a little learning.
you don’t need to update every day. If it’s working - you can just let it ride. If you don’t update forever, then just update your keyring first and you’ll be good to go.
I’ve been seeing all these posts about Linux lately, and looking at them, I can honestly see the appeal. I’d love having so much autonomy over the OS I use, and customize it however I like, even having so many options to choose from when it comes to distros. The only thing holding me back, however, is incompatibility issues....
The same thing I’ve always done - booted another OS that works with that software. No need to artificially limit yourself.
Once upon a time I remember running Dos, windows, os2 warp, and linux on one hard drive. Those were the days…. Ya ya, I’m going back to my retirement home bedroom…
I want to create a backup of my Linux system, including user files, from the command line. I tried using Timeshift but it doesn’t have a CLI argument to include a folder....
I like separating backups and snapshots as timeshift recommends. Backups are better handled by a different process copying your files to a remote location (pc failure, house fire, etc.). Lastly, backups are personal, so you gotta do what works for you - whatever makes them happen is good enough in my opinion ;)
My setup (not perfect, but it works for me). I keep one snapshot only - but it is the entire drive including the home folder. It’s really close to a disk image minus the mount folders. This is done to a second local disk via rsync. The arch wiki entry on rsync has the full rsync command for this operation called out. I run this right before a system update.
Backups go to my NAS. Synology in my case. They have a cloud software package like iCloud, OneDrive, etc, except I run it on the NAS and I’m only limited on storage by what drives I throw into it. That software scoops up my user folders on all my PCs and I set it to keep the 10 latest versions.
Then since my NAS is inside my house, I back the entire NAS up to an external hdd and sneaker net it to work and keep it in my office drawer. This protects me from fires and whatnot. I do this monthly. This is a completely manual process.
Some people have accused me of insanity-but it’s really not that hard. I don’t worry about losing pictures of my kids, and it’s aged well with my family (for example, my daughter doesn’t worry about losing stuff while she’s in college - if she writes a paper, 10 copies are kept here at home on the NAS automatically). And none of it was hard to set up, maybe just a bit pricey for the NAS (but it’s got a lot of other super useful things going for it)
So ya, I’d recommend letting timeshift do its thing for snapshots, and I’d rethink what you’re trying to do for backups. I strongly believe they are two different things.
I’m pretty sure there are lots of options that work great. I personally just use rsync-but I know the command line is scary for a lot of people making the transition. There are lots of options like timeshift that basically put a gui wrapper around rsync. I’ve seen a lot of love for borg as well - maybe try one of those two.
I feel backups are personal and it’s hard to get a “just do this instruction”. You’ll probably have to pick a product, and then do some homework to see if it can do what you want. This is further complicated by the distro you use - or more specifically if your distro uses btrfs. Some people use a backup as a sort of snapshot, and btrfs is more full featured than ext in that regard.
I know they funded moderna - they basically built Moderna’s new plants including their cmo’s plant so that they could produce at scale. Govt built and funded the plants at risk - prior to fda approval - so that it massively sped up the process to getting the drug in people’s hands. Those plants are now used for other drugs.
I think - but not 100% sure - Pfizer did it on their own.
Got reminded of this while reading about ProtonMail. The reason I haven't gotten into proper #piracy is that I don't have a VPN for torrenting, and the reason I don't have a VPN is that I don't #torrent. So it would be nice if I got a good VPN while #degoogling myself.
Will ProtonVPN rat me out to Comcast? I know some VPNs don't hide what you're downloading from your ISP, for reasons I don't fully understand.
I’ve just installed ProtonVPN on my Deck but it won’t connect and tbh I don’t want to touch anything in the console/tinker with that…how can I still use ProtonVPN?
So steam deck is arch based. I just installed arch on my desktop with gnome. I couldn’t get proton vpn to work at all until I installed network-manager-applet. Then it worked fine. (It wouldn’t connect). I had to do a ton of googling before I found that fix, I think a lot of people give up on proton vpn before they find that solution/dependency. It sounds like other packages can provide what proton-vpn is looking for, but I think network-manager-applet gets installed often enough as a dependency where it just works for some people, while for others getting proton to work is a chore. (I’m pretty sure it’s not installed on a fresh install with gnome - making getting proton to work on a bare bones install challenging). I dunno if that or another package is already there on the steam deck - but worth checking that line of troubleshooting out.
Now, if it’s not there - I don’t know the full dangers of installing that package on the steam deck, maybe someone smarter can comment on that. It should be noted that I installed network manager with pacman and proton vpn from the AUR. I don’t know how the flatpak would behave - but it didn’t work either without network manager installed.
No man’s sky for the first time. It’s fun for a bit I think. Dunno if it’s “I’m gonna play this forever” fun - seems a bit repetitive. But it was on sale and it’s amusing enough. I tried it out because I thought starfield was so boring, and felt like playing a space game.
I used manjaro for a while, and it just worked out of the box. The problem is with the AUR. Manjaro is always a little bit behind the aur, and this leads to breakages because a package needs a dependency version that isn’t available. It’s like doing partial upgrades which arch is clear about: don’t do it. The other thing is that this delay is for testing, but there’s been questions raised if manjaro really does the testing justice.
If you stay away from the aur and use flatpaks, manjaro won’t have issues generally speaking. But now there’s an alternative in endeavor-it’s got a nice installer and dumps you into an arch+ environment. Me personally I didn’t find arch difficult to install, so I just went that route.
I got it for “free” with my new cpu purchase. I played about 5 hours. It was a total slog. Put it down and have zero regrets. Bethesda has been making some very boring games lately imo.
I literally did this on a new pc two weekends ago. Downloaded win11 iso, installed, typed in the key off my win 7 cd rom retail packaging that’s god knows how old, done.
I’ve long since moved to linux and just dual boot win11 for games that don’t run well in linux. I won’t buy a key at this point just for that.
I don’t get it - where did all these idiots come from in the western developed worlds? It’s like half have forgotten history, and are hell bent on sending us into this fascist dystopia where we’ve forgotten that freedom comes with a price. Nobody likes the darker side of the internet, but punishing regular users and businesses isn’t the answer. Everyone loves to pick on the USA, and we deserve it, but it’s happening seemingly everywhere.
My daughter has a learning disability. Dyslexia and some weird kind of error with certain fine motor skills. The diagnosis from everyone? ADHD-put her on drugs. What drugs would you like? If one drugs doesn’t fix her, we’ll try two drugs.
Thank god my wife and I resisted. Nobody could explain what was going on and how drugs would fix it. I ain’t gonna lie, her elementary school days were rough. But now, straight A college student in her junior year.
I’m sure there are people looking for it, but my experience was default diagnosis by doctors and schools pushing adhd onto kids where it wasn’t appropriate.
Mine would be pretty interesting in the hands of a capable writer - maybe a 75. This of course has nothing to do with me, I was but an observer of some pretty crazy family antics. It’d be like duck dynasty but with more crazy people. ;)
Just a tank and some lights, add some flow and boom! You’re there. Just get some salt and testing kits to keep things in balance. Those Hanna checkers are nice if you want to splurge - but that’s it, you’re done! I mean…. You have to get the fish and corals too - but you can make friends and get frags for free! Then you’re really done. Everything beyond that is automation, you don’t have to do any of it (although you can really dial in your nutrient balance if you use protein skimmer, algae scrubber, refugium, media reactors). But you don’t want to do that because then you’ll need a sump (but aren’t sumps handy? Who doesn’t want a sump?). Just make sure your stand accommodates everything-you don’t want to rebuild a stand. Leave room for controllers and uv meters and all that other stuff just in case you add it in the future - which you’re not going to becasue it’s expensive and overkill…
Sigh, my condolences. I’m shouting right beside you. I first learned about linux in 1993 in college. I got it working on a shiny new 486 with super vga graphics. We were allowed access to the college’s aix mainframes and thus the internet via a slip connection - but only through Unix like systems. Linux was amazing, I couldn’t believe we had x going, and loading up cad, matlab, maple, ftp, fsp, irc, nettrek, and everything else possible in the computer centers - but over a telephone line from our apartment.
Magical.
Funny how it really only became my daily driver three ish years ago - despite using it forever. Cuz games - glad that’s changed finally.
With the new computer and the newer Microsoft Windows updates they have really jam packed their OS with bloat and spyware. That being said I have no idea what I’m doing with Linux, need help with where to start.? What are some general tips? I understand there’s a lot of prebuilt Linux distributions or something what are some...
If you can, dual boot with two hard drives. Windows will work when linux doesn’t/you break it. Learn linux, distro hop, figure it out - and you’ll be able to learn at your own pace.
I’ve been thinking about switching to Linux for a while, but there are some things that make me want to stay on Windows. For example, Gaming and installation of graphics card and software availability....
This is the way. My advice is to add a second hard drive to your pc and install linux on that. Distro hop, install arch and break it horribly, swear at your printer, learn. Then when you screw up, you’ve lost nothing, you can switch back to your “‘ol faithful” and get the job done. What will eventually happen is you’ll find yourself spending more time in linux than windows until you almost never boot it up.
If you do it this way, there’s really only two things to worry about. 1) if you’re using mbr or want to still use mbr with uefi, you’ll have trouble dual booting cleanly and will probably want to reinstall windows. You can’t break anything, but you can’t dual boot from both methods (or at least I’m pretty sure I’ve never owned a motherboard that can). 2) when installing linux, learn and be careful about what drive contains windows - don’t ever pick that drive when formatting and partitioning. Bonus points if it’s a different brand and size - makes it almost impossible to pick the wrong drive. When using a single drive for dual booting, there’s much more opportunity to make a mistake and break your windows install if you’re not familiar with partitioning and boot loaders.
I literally can’t think of a way to break windows if you keep the above in mind, and then you can “make the switch” gradually.
I was using Windows for a long time, from 95, XP, 7 and 10. Games just worked out fine, software that I needed I pirated. But I was annoyed from updates, (cannot turn off MY pc, just update and turn off option) bing, fokin bing and oh the best - F1 binded to it....
Oh ya, forgot to mention that. It boots fine if I just unplug the optical drive. It’s when I plug in a new ssd into the same sata motherboard port - that’s when it hangs. It’s funny - it actually makes it to the login screen, it hangs only after trying to log in. I can’t even break out to another tty terminal.
Edit - the motherboard and chip and ram and video card are all new. It’s the old stuff I’m resuing-case, power supply, old hdds, ect
So I’m triple booting right now. I’ve got a windows drive and a separate manjaro drive. Those drives are older and getting small in space-so I bought a shiny new ssd.
Windows works fine, and I moved to arch on the new drive and that is working great. It’s not a big deal - the manjaro drive will get wiped once I’m comfortable the arch install. But I’d like to fix it just for learning purposes. I feel like there’s a text file somewhere that associated the optical drive’s uuid with the sata port that identifies as /dev/sda (but I’m not even sure optical drives have a uuid?)
Hmm lots of suspicion at the new drive. I wasn’t as deliberate as you described, but that new ssd now has arch on it and boots fine.
I guess maybe I’ll ask this question. Should I be able to just unplug an optical drive, and plug in anything else into that sata port without linux hanging? I wouldn’t expect the new drive to DO anything until it’s partitioned/formatted/mounted etc. but can I just swap components and expect to be able to boot?
Did that. fstab uses uuid for identification. If I plug ANY of my drives into that sata port where the optical drive was - manjaro won’t get past login.
Maybe my manjaro installation is borked and I don’t even know it (it’s actually been pretty good for a while now)
It does not-that was the first thing I went after. I thought (incorrectly) that optical drives were in fstab and I was surprised to see only my hard drives there. Then I learned a bit more, sr0, etc and was like hmm, I’m missing something. ;)
That I have not tried. I’ll try moving them around and see if it’s an issue with that port.
I’ve moved drives to that one port, but I haven’t tried shuffling all the components around.
My understanding with sata was that I should be able to move things around all I want. What would change is sda sdb sdc etc, and that’s why you use uuids in fstab. So it was strange to me that I couldn’t plug drives into that first port.
I’ll shuffle things around more when I get home and see if I can detect any further patterns.
Edit: as far as I can tell that port is nothing special other than it’s the first one. All the same in bios.
Thanks for all the help! Lots of good suggestions in this thread I can try for further troubleshooting. Most importantly, you all confirmed I should be able to unplug an optical drive, put in a new unformatted ssd, and generally move drives around - and linux should still boot. I did not think things would behave that way, so when I had issues I figured it’s of course pilot error. Also explains why I was having such a hard time finding information on the arch wiki ;)
Now I know something ain’t right, and my guess is its some user configuration (because it does boot, it just hangs later). This has now turned into a side project (what the heck did I break), I’ll update the thread if I figure it out. It’s a pretty clean install, very few AUR packages (mostly flatpaks), and has been otherwise pretty stable-it’ll be interesting to see how it actually broke.
The boot order is uefi hdd (which I can then pick the hard drive’s boot order in a sub menu), then uefi usb, then uefi optical drive, then network. I don’t think that’s the issue - it should always find something to boot before the optical drive.
I’m going to try the one drive at a time in that first port thing and add/move the rest around. I haven’t been as deliberate with the troubleshooting here as I should have (I immediately went towards a software issue - fstab or something similar). I could have a port / mobo problem. Need to separate software from hardware issue better. Luckily I have three installed operating systems on three drives and plenty of bootable isos to play with. ;)
There are a lot of news articles about “back to the office”, but they recirculate the same bad ideas. Let’s provide some new ideas for the media to circulate. It may also have the effect of making the office less terrible....
I went back to the office on my own. A long time ago. It should be noted that I like my bosses, peers, and my job in general (I mean it’s called work, not fun - but it isn’t miserable)
ability to build better relationships with everyone - it’s too easy to sling shit over email. Whole different experience actually talking to somebody - especially when one of you needs something difficult.
separation between work and home - I don’t like home feeling like the workplace.
remote work people are heading towards a future of being Bangalore’d. If your job is currently being split up into the part that needs to be local and a remote part - you’re only a few years away from watching someone overseas do it for 1/10th the cost. Be needed in person people!
I am a Linux noobie and have only used Mint for around six months now. While I have definitely learned a lot, I don’t have the time to always be doing crazy power user stuff and just want something that works out of the box. While I love Mint, I want to try out other decently easy to use distros as well, specifically not based...
I’ve been running it for a few years. I’ve learned the hard way to not use the AUR. Manjaro breaks AUR software installs with its delayed release schedule. I’m running it now with pretty much all flatpaks and it’s MUCH more stable. So if you do run it, stay away from native AUR and opt for flatpaks instead.
The next time it breaks I’ll finally get motivated, nuke the drive, and install arch again (I liked arch better).
I think I have the skills now to keep an arch box alive, if you don’t have those skills then manjaro won’t really solve that problem either imo. Just go mint or something similar.
I'm sure everyone lately has noticed there's a tonne of hate on the privacy subreddit, with every new post/comment there getting more and more aggresive than the last...
I’m older, and remember the days when the internet was “hard” (pre web). And because you had to work a little bit to find information, you tended to stick with, and contribute to the groups you found. Better engagement, better discussion, more inside jokes, better community. Reddit has just turned into an echo chamber of the lowest common denominator. Lemmy feels a bit more like the old days - a community with actual content.
I vote: do whatever you want with it (kill it, hand it over, whatever). Let’s leave it behind and concentrate on making this place awesome.
Valve To Steam Deck Owners: Stop Huffing Its Vent Fumes (kotaku.com)
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of December 10th
What have you all been playing!...
Manjaro OS
So I’ve been iso live testing Manjaro KDE Plasma lately and it looks very polished....
New to Linux, have a few questions
I currently use Windows 10 and I’d like to try out Linux. My plan is to set up a dual boot with OpenSUSE tumbleweed and KDE Plasma. I’ve read so many different opinions about choosing a distro, compatibility with gaming and Nvidia drivers, and personal issues with the ethos of different companies like Canonical. I value...
Arch on semi-critical pc? (Also EndeavourOS vs raw Arch?)
I am currently using Windows on an older HP Laptop, which I intend to replace with a Framework 16 by next summer, but my Desktop PC at home has been running EndeavourOS, my first ever Linux distro, since last summer, so I have some Arch-based experience....
How do y'all deal with programs not supported on Linux?
I’ve been seeing all these posts about Linux lately, and looking at them, I can honestly see the appeal. I’d love having so much autonomy over the OS I use, and customize it however I like, even having so many options to choose from when it comes to distros. The only thing holding me back, however, is incompatibility issues....
Microsoft may replace the Start button with the Copilot AI in Windows 12 (www.notebookcheck.net)
What is the best tool to backup my Linux system including user files?
I want to create a backup of my Linux system, including user files, from the command line. I tried using Timeshift but it doesn’t have a CLI argument to include a folder....
Need advice for backup software for linux
Hi,...
Pfizer says it will price Covid treatment Paxlovid at nearly $1,400 for a five-day course, which researchers estimate only costs Pfizer $13 to produce. That's a 10,000%+ markup. Shameful. (mastodon.world)
How do I use ProtonVPN on my Steam Deck in desktop mode?
I’ve just installed ProtonVPN on my Deck but it won’t connect and tbh I don’t want to touch anything in the console/tinker with that…how can I still use ProtonVPN?
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of October 8th
New thread!...
Migrated from Windows to Linux. Decided to share list of answers/statements I was looking for before did it (and could not find).
Finally migrated from Windows to Linux. For anyone wondering, what is the state of Linux as your primary OS for home PC\laptop in 2023....
Starfield Is Bethesda's Lowest-Rated Game On Steam (www.gamespot.com)
You can no longer activate new Windows 11 builds with Windows 7 or 8 keys (www.neowin.net)
What item did you "buy for life?"
How’s it holding up?
UK passes "online safety" bill making end-to-end encryption impossible (www.reuters.com)
Is ADHD over diagnosed?
If there were a biography written about your life, how interesting would it be for the average person to read?
Like a scale from 0 to 100 with 0 being boring af and 100 being “Omg this is the best book ever!”
What is your "inexpensive" hobby that turned out to be expensive/ you gradually invested lots of money into?
Edit: so it turns out that every hobby can be expensive if you do it long enough....
Today GNU/Linux is 32 years old (lemmy.ml)
Happy birthday 🎊🎉 GNU/Linux....
Hello, I’m going to be getting a new computer soon and have thought about linux. Questions inside
With the new computer and the newer Microsoft Windows updates they have really jam packed their OS with bloat and spyware. That being said I have no idea what I’m doing with Linux, need help with where to start.? What are some general tips? I understand there’s a lot of prebuilt Linux distributions or something what are some...
I am looking for help with switching from Windows to Linux
I’ve been thinking about switching to Linux for a while, but there are some things that make me want to stay on Windows. For example, Gaming and installation of graphics card and software availability....
I switched from Windows 10 to Linux. Its great!
I was using Windows for a long time, from 95, XP, 7 and 10. Games just worked out fine, software that I needed I pirated. But I was annoyed from updates, (cannot turn off MY pc, just update and turn off option) bing, fokin bing and oh the best - F1 binded to it....
What happens with optical drives
I’m trying to understand what happens with optical drives in general, and failing....
What would get you "back to the office"?
There are a lot of news articles about “back to the office”, but they recirculate the same bad ideas. Let’s provide some new ideas for the media to circulate. It may also have the effect of making the office less terrible....
What is your unbiased opinion on Manjaro?
I am a Linux noobie and have only used Mint for around six months now. While I have definitely learned a lot, I don’t have the time to always be doing crazy power user stuff and just want something that works out of the box. While I love Mint, I want to try out other decently easy to use distros as well, specifically not based...
best VPN for linux?
I’m looking for a VPN to replace my old one since moving to arch; so this VPN must be available on Flatpak or Arch linux. any reccs?
r/Piracy probably needs a rethink
I'm sure everyone lately has noticed there's a tonne of hate on the privacy subreddit, with every new post/comment there getting more and more aggresive than the last...