I’m an educator, and my Windows PC crashed during my first period class.
I had a cinnamon mint USB drive in my bag. I booted to it, and it saved the day!
I don’t have anybody to tell just how much of a godsend that was, but I figured you guys might appreciate it!
I have an older PC running as a file server using an Asus mobo raid controller that I’ve been afraid of updating. It also is the newest PC I have that still has an optical drive. I found some old discs I wanted to recover the data from, but Windows decided it could see the optical drive and assign it a drive letter, was happy with the driver, but did not want to actually read any discs. Fortunately, I too had a Cinnamon Mint USB on my desk, and a very old laptop with an optical drive that had an unbootable Windows 7 install on it. Fired it up and had it on the network and copying files from a DVD-R to my NAS in just a few minutes! Laptop is now running Mint and performs well :)
Another glorious victory in the OS wars.
Worth noting my linux pc has never crashed out of nowhere on its own. Its usually immediately after i change something
Hardware problems like faulty RAM are a thing, though. Linux is good, but it is not magic. Not every crash is a software problem.
I once had a faulty cpu and windows denied booting. I was able to tell grub to load the kernel an run off of 3 instead of four cores.
I had that machine running another 2 years or so.
I had my first full freeze today. Ive been using mint for months now. I think steam was having a meltdown but, I also had a finicky program running in bottles and my computer isn’t top of the line so that was a lot of resource use lol.
Keeping spare boot drives are wonderful. Certainly has come in handy on occasion. I’m surprised how many times I think something is a hardware issue that booting because both W11 and a recovered live boot Windows simply think it doesn’t exist and then booting into Linux, it just works.
Don’t tell @madthumbs@lemmy.world he has such a hateboner for Linux he runs !linuxsucks@lemmy.world and will think you are lying or paid shill.
Hey where can i get paid? I use linux btw.
Its a one time payment of a community ban.
Wait, linuxsucks isn’t a joke community?
Its a joke of a community.
No, you will be banned with prejudice for saying positive things about Linux there. Ask how I know.
Ask how I know.
How do you know?
Lol. Because I got banned for saying how quick and painless my move to Mint was in response to a flatly incorrect meme. Bam! Banned just like that.
That’s not surprising given their rules, especially rule 3.
IDK, saw a meme on all and commented on it. Didn’t pay a bit of attention to what comm it was. That’s what I get for scrolling before I’ve absorbed my coffee.
In my experience, Lemmy mods are slightly more ridiculous than Reddit mods, but their negative impact is far less (because someone can just create a rival community in a different instance, unlike Reddit).
I don’t feel terribly deprived to not get to interact with that comm.
Yeah that’s definitely a niche troll/dumb community, but I was speaking more broadly for other, ostensibly benevolent communities.
Whether or not the troll is serious they’re incredibly pathetic as a human being. No life behaviour. However, giving them attention is what they crave, best to act as if they don’t exist IMO.
Nope.
Madthumbs
Username checks out
Paid by whom? Lmao how completely bizarre.
Big Linux
Hey, say what you will, they give me their product for free in exchange for me telling everyone how great it is
*Big Tux
Apparently he thinks BSD is better and Linux is starving the OSS community. Such a weirdo
As someone who is only starting to delve into Linux recently I must admit it’s not as great as you guys make it all seem. Maybe I’m just having lots of issues cause I missed some wiki or chose the wrong distro or something
My experience with Linux:
Step 1) wow, that was surprisingly easy to install and get set up. This is working great!
Step 2) God dammnit, another small little thing I want to change and have no idea how to do without a half hour of research. Maybe I should just go back to Windows.
Step 3) [Logging into windows after having used Linux for a couple weeks] Holy fucking shit Windows is a nightmare. I forgot how much the OS hates me, wants to control and resit everything I do, and how much of its bullshit I need to disable in roundabout ways. Back to Linux! I’ll learn it over time.
The best way to make the final move and be happy in the end is a slow one, IMO.
- While still on windows, try to find alternatives to programs you use that are also available on linux and use them. Things like LibreOffice, Gimp or VLC player. You’ll get to know something after you switch.
- Dual boot for a while. Try Linux as a daily driver and if something doesn’t work, you still have windows to go back to.
- It’s quite probable that after some time you’ll realize that you haven’t booted windows in quite some time and decide to repurpose the drive space for something more useful.
- Keep using Linux and get angry whenever you’ll have to deal with winshit.
I have two PCs. One is still windows but I do plan on moving it to Linux when I get more experience. The other pc is my old one that I put Linux on recently to try and get more used to it. I just don’t have much time/desire to tinker with it, I just want something that works. I have enough things to tinker with already. At some point I’ll make the jump but I think I need to try another distro maybe
What problems are you seeing? To avoid getting your hopes up, this question is more about curiosity about what problems some users moving to Linux still face rather than volunteering tech support, though I wouldn’t be surprised if you get some suggestions to solve your problems anyways.
I feel you. I also don’t find the idea of tinkering with my PC all the time very pleasing, especially since I’ve got family. I picked openSUSE for the start and I’m happy with it after like 5 years? It’s a bit “boring” diatro, isn’t as hyped as Arch nor as rock solid as Debian, but it just works and I went it with because of snapper which is a lifesaver.
Its because we have gained experience from using it for a while, and we forget the annoyances we had in the beginning. :)
Hang in there and you will feel the same.
I don’t get this at all. im in IT but im an old guy who does not have the patience for mucking about. If you can install windows on a machine then you can install linux and zorin installed and ran and did not really need anything special. Then since it comes with so much out of the box pre installed software I would call it a bit easier than windows. more akin to a mac.
I’ve never even heard of zorin until now. That’s part of the issue. Even just deciding on a distro was a whole topic to research and I just don’t have the time since I work 6 days a week. I just want something that works and I thought Debian Trixie would have been that but it’s more work than I anticipated.
Yeah there’s a tendency to not get that some of us are interested in Linux but prioritize boring. I’m using nobara (a gaming focused fork of fedora) and am loving how boring it is. It just works.
yeah there is sorta an issue I see in a lot of these types of things. You get people asking how a newb should get into something and people have these strange biases. I think in some cases its the folks that can’t understand that people don’t understand everything they understand. Or its just a particular religious like ferver around a philosophy. Like with biking you get folk who hate bike lanes and insist all biker should aggressively take the lane. I think I had another example of a group but it escapes me now. Anyway I do see a lot of folks pushing like arch and saying its way easy. I mean it is not as bad as it used to be but they don’t get that someone wants to install and it to work without doing a single solitary additional thing. Zorin actually gets hate because it has a paid for version with support along with a community edition. I don’t get that as its actually the oss model for making money and is how red hat got going. You don’t really buy the software you buy support. Some see ubuntu and its respins in general as a sell out maybe because you can opt to have the non open source video drivers from nvidia. Anyway they do a disservice by pushing things that are not really set it and forget it. Like im doing bazzite now and if somone asks for a system that is good with gaming I will mention it but assume a gamer is willing to go to a bit greater lengths. The install requires you to get an iso particular to your hardware. Mainly video card. So its like one extra step and not quite as easy as installing windows. Some folks seem to not like it because steam is intalled by default which means it has proton which is why its great out of the box for gaming.
What kinds of issues have you had? I haven’t had a single problem since switching a couple years ago. Sometimes there are driver issues with specific hardware.
Yesterday I downloaded a mod manager for Valheim and it opened to a blank screen so I had to google around and find out I need to set an environment variable. Then how to do that via terminal but I also wanted a way to automate it and so I found out about .bashrc and alias. And there’s probably easier or better ways but like half the crap I find online feels like I’m trying to decipher another language and/or its a 15 year old post so idk if it’s even valid anymore.
I play Valheim on Linux and have hosted a server before.
Easiest way is just to use R2 Mod Manager. It’s available for Linux too. You just launch the game through it instead of Steam / wherever you launch it. I use PikaOS now which is based on Debian but had Bazzite in the past and it worked there too.
You do have to tell it where Steam / the game is installed though, but that’s true of it even in Windows.
PS: fastest way to get help is probably venting/ saying something isn’t working in a Linux community lol. It’s a useful thing to know. That’s how I sometimes get my answers too.
environment variables are a thing on windows as well. I grew up with windows and had to set environment variables for random stuff there as well. That is just a (depending on what you do) fairly normal thing. i hate to say it because obviously we all want people to switch to linux and have a good time and want to be helpful but … that’s just a skill issue
Most programs work on Windows though without needing to set an environment variable.
same is true for linux
Well that would depend on what you use to run that mod manager, as that’s probably a Windows application using wine (or proton, which is still based on wine). If you always just launch it from bash, .bashrc is the easiest. Launchers like Bottles or Steam will let you configure launch options per program/game. e.g ENVVAR=value %command% (%command% is a standin for the actual launch command, you leave that as is - it’s necessary because you can add things both before and after the command)
But yes, overall, running Windows software is still the most annoying part of using Linux. At least usually for games run from Steam there’s not much tinkering needed assuming the game works (so no kernel level anticheat games)
Yesterday I downloaded a mod manager for Valheim
- has an app issue
- blames the OS
WhyWouldTheOSDoThis.jpg
I downloaded r2modman and it worked out of the box. I found out shortly after that some modders moved to a new site and gale mod manager was now the recommended one. I tried and it didn’t work out of the box so I had to do some tinkering. Both of themworked fine on windows with no issues. Yes I am new to Linux and its a learning experience for me. I didn’t blame the OS, I said it didn’t seem as easy as everyone says. There is so much conflicting info and a million different distros that it all applies to differently and people neglect to mention all the details and a million of other little things that compound. Will I get it at some point after using it more? Yes. Has that time come when I’ve used the OS for a collective of maybe 4 hours here and there? No.
To pour oil on the fire (since you said you already decided on an OS), a lot of people recommend Linux Mint as a goto OS when moving from Windows, supposed to be the most similar experience.
Do you see why this might not be the right approach to build a community when someone is asking for help in a polite way?
I know that story doesn’t really go anywhere, but it was a big deal to me!
Might be worth permanently defenestrating, if possible.
Already a step ahead of you there!
As soon as I saw all my drivers were working and all my software needs were met, I went ahead with the install after work.
💪
Haven’t seen getting off Windows referred to that way before, but I love it.
Richard Stallman said it best:
Now of course people who want freedom shouldn’t use Windows at all, you’ve got to defenestrate your computer, which means either you throw Windows out of the computer, or you throw the computer out the window.
<eating from foot intensifies>
Ok, this is the perfect verb for leaving Windows! I love it. The verb was already fun, but I never thought to apply it to the OS.
It went from a disaster to your day being saved! It was a great story!
What are you talking about? That is one hell of a story!
I remember when I was still using Windows 7 the PC broke (I forget what broke) but I was able to recover all of my files just by simply booting into Ubuntu and mounting the drives. It was my first time ever using Linux and but since then I’ve been happy with using Linux and keep a USB with cachyos on it just in case.
Running from USB is extremely cool as a feature.
Linux is great and comes in the clutch. I’m glad it helped.
I keep a live usb in my bag just in case as well. Glad to hear it saved the day for you.
I have been testing the waters on my home PC, and was thrilled to see the live USB in my bag.
It might be time for me to bite the bullet and load it on my laptop too. I am beyond fed up with Windows at this point.
The minimal software compatibility issues were the only thing holding me back. (and GeForce drivers…)
Which are the incompatible software?
Do it. Rip off the bandaid and don’t look back.
I’m with /u/Lka1988, rip the bandaid off and don’t look back. Linux is getting better and better so fast these days, it’s wild. You can probably ride that bootable thumbdrive for a good while. Once you get things sorted out, six months from now, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without Linux.
In any case, glad to see Linux saving the day. If anything, Linux should be a tool that you familiarize yourself with so you can use it when you need or in a pinch.
I’ve been on a straight Linux laptop for a while now. So far, the one major issue is getting Scrivener to work. Everything else is fine.
Minor self tech support getting Calibre loaded. And working GOG games (pathfinder) onto the machine. As an IT noob though, it’s not bad. I liken it to suddenly learning browsers and the internet alongside windows back on the 90s, in terms of difficulty. Steam games are a click and go so far.
Granted I bought an S76, so I’m starting with a base that is supposed to work right out of the box. It mostly does.
The most major hiccup is mods for games. My partner is still into DDO, for example, but needs a windows partition to run his favorite mod.
My only issue is fan noise. So I just use the Sony corded headset and it works. Yeah, I know, but they’re the industry standard for sound and purchased before the shitstorm re ownership of games.
I always keep a bootable drive in my bag. It has come in handy many, many times
Glad to hear it saved the day and that you’re trying Linux full time. Love a good success story!
For you or anyone else who want to keep an emergency kit on a USB drive on hand, I recommend checking into Ventoy. With it, you can keep multiple ISOs on a single bootable USB drive and choose which one you want at boot time. Keep an emergency Linux desktop, rescue disks, etc on it and you’ll be good to go. You can easily add more or update existing images just by writing files to the drive. No reformatting required.
yeah ventoy has been a life saver for me. I have multipe linux distros and BSDs on there as well as important immediate files I need access to on a fresh install. I know it’s “shoddy or sketchy” but it’s the only tool out there that does exactly what I need it to do. i.e. save my ass.
I’ve never heard of this tool before, but it looks useful. What’s shoddy or sketchy about it? Is something up with the developer?
I can’t remember all the details but it’s not so much the developer but rather rumors being that it’s potentially malware, issues with the AUR version in the same regard, concerns about certain lines of code, etc, etc, etc. nothing really defacto proven but “worries” about it.
I personally have never had issues with ventoy and i’ve been using it for years.
This is good to know! Thanks!!
Fun nano-side-story: I discovered Batocera Linux while searching for distros that have a dedicated spin for USB.
It let my kids experience the glory of my youth including the crappy Atari 2600 games
I have a 1 TB microSD for my steam deck with Botocera loaded slap full! Love it!
Hmmm… my gamer brother-on-law loves his Steam deck. I run Batocera on a standalone cheapo NUC. It would be a great holiday gift for him to get my classics ROMs collection on a card he can just boot
That’s pretty cool!
Reminds me of when the Windows podium computer decided to randomly update during a student presentation in my college class, no word of warning or anything. A crash would have been preferable! At least in both cases, we get to preach the gospel of FOSS, lol.
Windows in general is pretty good at warning before running updates, you usually get a few days before being forced to run the updates.
There is much to blame Windows for, but if it forces a reboot on you, it is because it was ignored it earlier.
You mention this being a “podium computer”, so probably a shared machine that no one cares about updating.
For future reference, if you are using a shared computer for presentations, you can see the update status in the system tray, Windows will show the update icon with an orange or red dot if it is waiting for a reboot.
I am an IT guy and I often get tasked with preparing the presentation computer for large presentations, I will go down to the event room an hour before and boot up the computer to check the status of it so I have time to deal with the shit it might throw up.
Sure, if you spend a lot of time coddling a windows computer it will usually work somewhat okay, but a linux machine on the other hand just works without any of the hassle, such as having to remember to check in on it before you are going to use it
Well, Microsoft really is wonderful for creating so many such jobs
Literally is a big deal! I carried around an ubuntu usb for so long when I tried to use it to save someones old laptop, it was already corrupted. >.<
This is me, but it’s Kali.
So many useful apps bundled makes it a great live distro to keep in the bag just in case.
Could you tell more about the story? I also love Linux but I’d probably just restart a windows pc if it crashed as a first step
When I say “crashed”, I mean that the operating system became corrupted or unusable without any recovery options beyond formatting and a clean install.
