Open the SVG and have a look at what’s happening during boot.
journalctl -b will give you some more info too. If you’re using grub to boot (probably in /boot/grub/grub.cfg), you can change the loglevel and add the udev option to get a bunch more info. Helped me with a random issue recently. Here’s mine for an example:
You dont even need a separate partition, just dont format and dont delete the /home folder. You can even keep the /etc folder as well to keep system wide settings.
I just copied my whole root partition to a new Laptop over netcat. It still has close hardware (Intel CPU, no extra GPU, etc.), but some differences in interfaces etc.
Things one might have to consider:
/etc/fstab will need to be redone
All interfaces changed, so network configs may need to be updated
Other programs relying on hardware or paths that don’t exist anymore need to be updated (eg. conky did not work due to i8k being not supported, other interface ids etc.)
But literally nothing that would break anything. Because Arch is usually installed manually, one knows what needs to be cared for, what could break or could cause certain issues.
Analyzing your comment in a different light. What your saying is if I copy my /home (someone said /etc too) over to my laptop, and back it up as well, I’m golden?
would different hostnames and usernames make a problem? As far as my knowledge goes it won’t as long as I also bring /etc over, but I have no Idea if /etc is connected to something deeper or not.
And also also, might seem like a dumb question but I had to edit a file to automount my other disks at startup, won’t it like break everything if my system only gets /home after boot or something? Caz I have enought free space to copy over my existing /home, delete it, partition, and mount it back. What’d the benefits and dangers be?
if I copy my /home (someone said /etc too) over to my laptop, and back it up as well, I’m golden?
/home yes., but ideally only files and dirs starting with a dot (so called “dotfiles” under your home dir. tar cvfa homedots.tar.gz /home/username/.??* should take care of it.
Please note it will include some large stuff that’s probably not needed, like .cache, or some individual caches for other apps that don’t use .cache, like the browsers.
Don’t copy /etc, it’s usually machine-specific.
would different hostnames and usernames make a problem?
Hostname no (if you don’t bring etc). Username technically yes, you may want to rename the home dir. The user id and group id are important too but usually off it’s the first user on the same distro it will receive the same ids (typically 1000 nowadays). If not, you can change that manually and recursively chown 1000:1000 -r /home/username.
To clarify, /etc can have things that are relevant for the machine so you may want to back it up, but it’s not usually transferrable directly to another machine because it probably doesn’t play the exact same role. It has things like service configs, network configs etc.
Even if you’re trying to migrate a machine to new hardware and the machine will play the same role it’s best to pick and choose files from /etc/ on a case by case basis. What I do is grab a tarball of /etc and set it aside, then if I need to redo something the same way it was on the old machine I can dig through the tarball and only use the relevant files.
Like I said it’s extremely specific. For example if I want to reconfigure the SSH daemon that’s usually a couple of lines which I know by heart (turn root login and password logins off) which I can do by hand; if I want to reconfigure CUPS printing it’s best to use the CUPS admin interface to autodetect the printer, you don’t usually want to mess with its config files; for some things like /etc/fstab or NFS or RAID I may want to copy some stuff but edit the disk UUIDs; for some things like Samba I could in theory copy the config straight over. It varies.
The list of installed packages may also be relevant when you migrate to a new machine. Different distros have different commands for obtaining a list of installed packages, and different ways of using that on the new machine to restore the same package selection. This is useful and typically can get you started much faster on the new machine.
Maybe you want to migrate a PostgreSQL database to a newer version without starting PostgreSQL server.
Maybe you installed OpenSSH but don’t want sshd to run yet, because you haven’t hardened the configs.
Maybe you installed Nginx as a part of a migration from Apache httpd, but httpd is already running.
In addition, Arch hardly configures your system in a custom way, too. When you install a package, most of the time, it responds with “here are the files from the developer that you asked for.”
If you don’t like this philosophy, then your feelings are perfectly valid, and this is a textbook example of why different distributions exist 👍
Yes, you flash the installation system onto the USB stick, boot the laptop from this USB and then it should be a simple graphical installation wizard. There are plenty of tutorials online and even if all computers can be slightly different it is basically the same scheme.
Once Steam is installed Proton is automatically downloaded for games that by default use it. Games that are not officially using Proton can have it enabled in Steam’s game properties. Most would point you to protondb.com, site showing what games you can suspect to work.
I did a look into this. softmaker is best when it comes to compatibility of displaying files. Wps office is ok, but some text would be on top of others. I did find that there is a free version of softmaker, which should be ok.
I love how this expansive, barely-biased summary - which is WAY above-bar, to be clear - is followed up by everyone’s “this is my favourite distro and you should run it too” even if it’s completely badly-matched.
I used to run Tumbleweed with KDE on my Nvidia system. I found the rolling release structure of Tumbleweed to cause extra work for me, because kernel updates came frequently and occasionally broke the Nvidia drivers. As a workaround, I ended up pinning my kernel to an old version.
Nvidia drivers have been at least a little troublesome on every distro I’ve used, particularly with the additional CUDA libraries.
One nice thing about Suse is that it uses BTRFS by default, and you can use snapper to revert your whole system if something goes wrong. So if Nvidia shits the the bed after an update, it’s easy to roll back. Most distros default to ext4 and do not have snapshot support by default, which feels like living in the stone age to me after using Suse and BTRFS.
Of course you CAN set up BTRFS and snapshots in any distro, but that’s a lot to ask for a beginner with Linux. I strongly recommend choosing a distro that does that for you, like Suse.
I find that even if you get a touch primary device, make sure to get one with a keyboard, Ubuntu, Fedora, doesn’t matter, KDE, Gnome doesn’t matter, the touch only experience on linux is simply not great. Make extra sure to get the keyboard with it if its optional.
+1 have been trying to make a Linux tablet work. Gnome is alright but it’s got a crap CPU and 2gb of ram and nothing lightweight has good touch support annoyingly
I am, very hesitantly, optimistic for the new smithay based compositors. Cosmic doesn’t have touch support yet, but it’s super light weight, I get better perf then I do even with KDE. I plan on swapping to it full time on my tablet when it gets touch support. (and when some touch friendly gui stuff is available). you also have catacomb which is an actual mobile compositor. Very promising stuff, but still very far out
I was trying things along the lines of hyprland, sway and i3. I have this idea in my head that a touch screen tiling WM would work really well (from what I’ve seen that’s what people love so much about the iPad nowadays anyway)
Hyprland has something called hyprgrass I think which enables touchscreen gestures, still in the process of figuring out how to install that in NixOS though. (it’s got a nix.flake but it’s not in nixpkgs and I’m still unsure of how to install flakes to a traditional configuration.nix setup)
You could probably look into something like paperwm or Niri, I think scrollable window managers have a lot of potential to be a novel but good touch experience
EDIT: Im not sure if niri support touch, I havent tested it, but I think i might actually try it myself when I get the chance now
I can see why you want to dual boot, given your use case. For gaming and MS office, Linux is not better than Windows. That said, Linux is fun to learn and you can experiment and gradually move everything over from Windows.
If you want the absolute easiest transition from Windows, I think Linux Mint Cinnamon is the best. It looks like Windows out of the box and is organized similarly. Its like going to a familiar grocery store where you know where to find the things you need. It is stable, there are rarely any weird conflicts or updates that break the system, and it comes with all the codecs you’ll need for media. In terms of installing new software, the software “store” is so simple, it makes installing software much like installing apps on Android (without all the bullshit marketing, of course). Shit just works. Steam, spotify, etc. are right there and install flawlessly. Many Steam games are native Linux and you’ll be able to install the Linux version of any game you own. For Windows-only games, you can gradually experiment with Wine, etc. and see how that works for you.
MS Office is obviously the elephant in the room, but office apps are pretty standardized at this point. You can use MS 365 online apps. Or, it is an easy transition from Word, Excel and Powerpoint to LibreOffice. Much more intuitive than using Google apps, for example. Write a few papers in LibreOffice and just save in Word format for submission (although most profs will accept Open Document Format as well, which is also supported by MS Office). Double-check formatting in Windows or the online Office 365 apps if you are worried. It is pretty easy to get used to if you use Office like most people do.
But don’t take my word for it. Make a bootable live usb and see for yourself. …readthedocs.io/…/latest/
I don’t know whether I have gotten some settings wrong in Steam, but I have to open the Properties window of every freshly installed game, and set it to launch using Proton GE, otherwise it just defaults to nothing. So if a game doesn’t work for you, always check if it is configured to launch using at least some kind of Proton thingy.
The most important Linux advice I have is this: Linux isn't Windows. Don't expect things to works the same.
Don't try too hard to re-configure things that don't match the way things are on Windows. If there isn't an easy way to get a certain behavior, there's probably a reason for it.
Mint Cinnamon user praising it in the comments, on the case!
I switched to Linux in the earlier days of Windows 8.1. Mint was the second distro I tried out after Ubuntu Unity, and it’s still my daily driver ten years later. Cinnamon felt more familiar to me An XP-Vista-7 veteran, than Win 8.1 and 10. Mint feels like someone sat down and designed the whole thing, rather than slapping layer after layer of new crap on top of the same code from the late 90’s.
Out of the box Mint is very usable, the customization I do to it is stuff like change the wallpaper and default color scheme.
The Cinnamon team just gets me. They make software for people like me.
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