From personal experience: if you’re trying to dual-boot with Windows, I recommend using completely separate drives (rather than separate partitions). Windows is very shitty about overwriting your Linux boot partitions when it updates. Having a separate drive isn’t fool-proof, but it helps.
I haven’t needed Windows in >10 years though, so maybe it’s not as shitty about that, but I recommend caution.
Back in the late 1900s, you could open a laptop and remove a hard drive with only a #2 phillips screw driver. So I think they mean that. Physically remove your Windows drive, install a fresh drive, install/play/learn Linux. With your Windows drive disconnected, you can do ANYTHING in Linux without fear of losing any data on that other drive.
Frustrated and just "need to work"? Reverse the process back to the Windows drive.
Feeling a little more confident and want to access your files on the Windows drive? Get a SATA-USB adapter. No need to go all enclosure just yet as that just adds steps when you need the Windows setup.
Comfortable in Linux? Copy your important data over to the Linux system, format the original drive, NOW put it in an enclosure for a handy backup drive.
Feeling confident in your newfound prowess? Connect that external drive to a Raspberry Pi and turn the Pi into a basic NAS, maybe drop a little VPN on it, and now you can access that device/drive from anywhere. At the very least, you now have a place to backup important data in case the laptop falls into a volcano. Hell, now you've got a reason to subscribe to SelfHosted & HomeLab.
Reference: 1998-2001 I ran a "dual boot" using removable hard drive bays on a full tower system. As noted above, Windows can sometimes mess up what makes your dual boot possible.
Currently running Mint on an older HP Envy AMD laptop to get back into the Linux swing. Win10 is my daily driver on the desktop from that need of things to work. When you're fixing other people's/company's computers all day, the last thing you want to do is work on your own computer. That and a lack of real gaming support/documentation forever ago is what pushed me back to Windows. The old argument of "Linux is free" wasn't too heavy a talking point when MS kept giving me free licenses to stick with what I was more comfortable with. Win11 reminds me of Win8, reminds me of WinME, and the cycle of MS dysfunction continues. I want off the ride.
With Gaming as viable as it is on Linux, plus much nicer tools for VMs (AND Docker exists now), I've got about year to convert my daily driver desktop (2025 end of Win10).
Oh and I did try to put Arch on that laptop. It was overwritten by Mint as soon as it booted up without a GUI. Now, might of been my fault for using a "base image" or something, but again I need it to just work without spending what limited time I have trying to make it work. But hey, at least folks aren't trying to get you to install Slackware from 3.5" floppies.
Maybe invest in an external drive you can copy important files to. Dual booting is usually issue free but it’s always possible to have data loss in general. Data loss, especially data that is personally important to you is a tragedy.
I think it depends on what you plan to use it for.
If it’s just browsing the web or basic usage (email, watching videos, etc.) it’s perfect for a tech illiterate person. You have distros that just work, like Mint, or Pop!_Os (compared to distros like Debian that can require a bit of tinkering, or Arch/Gentoo where you need to tinker a lot more). I’m not certain but I think these distros work well for gaming as well.
If you have specific needs for software like the Adobe suite, Excel or audio/video software, it’s still possible but definitely less accessible.
As far as the difference between Linux and Windows, I’m not sure you’d notice much if you stay at the surface. The main difference is the fact that you actually own your system and you can literally do what you want with it (even irreversibly break it).
This is pretty much my take. For tech newbies that essentially only need a browser, linux mint is great. On the other extreme, if you want to tinker, get your hands dirty, then you probably already know what distro you want.
It’s toughest for the people in between who need some more advanced os functionality or need programs that aren’t natively supported, but otherwise don’t want to know more about their os than they have to. Not because Linux doesn’t have that advanced functionality (and more!) or because there aren’t alternatives and workarounds for those programs, but because of the learning curve.
For someone already tech illiterate, the learning curve is almost a moot point. For the tinkerer, it’s practically a feature. But for the people in between, it can a real obstacle.
Mint is an Ubuntu derivative like Pop, so the package manager is apt. Synaptic is a gui for apt.
If you want to learn and use ansible, go for it, but it might be a bit more than you need. If you are just wanting to install the apps you want, you can just write a quick bash script that installs all the apps you want.
The file structure should be the same in Mint as Pop, so restoring your dot files should be straight forward.
Mostly I downvote people who post screenshots of headlines or tweets instead of posting a link to the source. IMHO we need better moderators to delete that crap, but I do my part.
It’s underrated, but it has so much untouched potential to make it really shine and it is unfortunately still a bit unintuitive to use.
I wonder if it will ever get some love again by the devs, because it’s clear that the focus is 99% on the 3D aspect of things right now and it will most likely be so for a long time to come, for good reasons of course, the advancements there have been astounding and really needed because they’re THE libre 3D animation software, while there are already other established libre video editors out there, so there is less necessity. But I still believe that if Blender was to ever give a refresh to the VSE, it would immediately outclass all the other options
related question, although i don’t think it’s big enough for a post of its own.
if i use btrfs subvolumes, does it mean that i can have one EFI partition and one root partition, and then subdivide the root partition using subvolumes? how would that work during the installation process? or is it done after installation?
Pretty much, yeah. At some point I remember the recommendation being having a separate /boot as well due to incompatibilities with GRUB’s save default option iirc, not sure that’s a thing anymore.
Anyway, you usually set that up during the install process, although I’m not sure graphical installers let you handcraft btrfs subvolume mount points or even select them as such these days. Last I checked at least they either just used a default layout (@ and @home with Ubuntu, for instance) or treated it as a single volume with no further options.
One EFI + one ROOT partition is what I do on both my laptop and desktop for years, /home is a subvolume to my root partition. This setup suits my needs as I don’t have to worry about how big should my root or home (gaming) partition should be.
I use Arch on my desktop and Opensuse on my laptop. They both have options to set up subvolumes from their installer, Debian does not, and I’m not sure about other distros, but you can always set that up after installation, just make your home partition the last one (after the root partition) so you can easily delete it after and grow the root partition without much blocks relocation.
if i use btrfs subvolumes, does it mean that i can have one EFI partition and one root partition, and then subdivide the root partition using subvolumes?
Yes.
how would that work during the installation process? or is it done after installation?
That depends on your distro. What do you plan to achieve with the separate subvolumes?
I already have a partition layout in btrfs where I have a /home and a /root partition, since when I installed I didn’t know about btrfs subvolumes. I use Void Linux and I think it’s after installation, since I don’t remeber having a subvolumes step during the installation.
I’ll make sure to remind about btrfs subvolumes in case I reinstall. There’s a btrfs program that has a subvolume argument, so I’m guessing that’s what I could use.
I am reminded of the ability MANY years ago to write the kernel file directly to a floppy disk, or start of a hard drive and somehow being able to boot that way.
I just can’t recall how I did it, or WHY I did it.
Back when the kernel would fit on a floppy disk. I am truly showing my age.
6 yr old grandson found a box of old floppy disks and was asking what they were. He started stacking them up making card houses and roads for his matchbox cars. Glad he got some use out of those recycled AOL floppies.
I haven’t minded the tongue-in-cheek jokes about distros since forever, but people who take it way too seriously, and don’t see that each distro has its benefits and drawbacks are kinda annoying.
I don’t understand why so many people are comfortable using the Office Job OS when they could be using something that suits them.
It comes preinstalled on most computers people buy. Tbh that is mostly the reason.
It’s like if you bought a house and it came with a full closet of “good enough for you” suits and instead of going out and buying comfy clothes you just use the suits provided, especially because you know how to wear suits and haven’t yet figured out how to wear hoodies which look “harder” (ok the analogy is falling apart but ykwim).
The OS has no concept of an “fn” key. The keyboard never sends an fn keycode to the host machine. It’s a feature that’s entirely handled by the keyboard firmware itself. Your computer either receives an F2 key or a “brightness down” key, but it has no idea an fn key was involved in that one way or another.
So you could maybe modify your keymap to swap things out yourself. Intercept the “brightness down” keycode and manually map it to F2 or whatever. That’s the only in-software solution I can think of. That’s basically what the BIOS toggles do, as far as I know. Less than ideal to do yourself, though.
linux
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.