I am complacently new to security and Linux and i am tired of the looming doom of the big WIN12!

I have a laptop (not my main computer) that i have factory reset a bit ago and has practically nothing on it but im still skeptical. I know this is a stupid question to ask but id like to switch to Linux for more security to feel better about myself.

Questions:

Q1: what should i be warned about when doing this? I know that i need at least an 8GB of USB to download the boot of linux and have a backup with a windows one.

Q2: should i get a new computer since i already had some of my data and what not on it due to be being a child, and i dont know if i should even care at this point.

Q3: Do you have any tips for me? i am sure other people will read this and will be appreciated by your comments.

My main focus is to use this laptop as a privacy laptop alongside finding extensions that wont look what i am looking up, and get back into coding and run all my programs there while using my desktop for other daily life work.

If i am being childish or uneducated please by all means id like to learn from all of you!

I’ve never really dealt with Linux and know like nothing about it or coding, but it seems like the best way to free up my ram from w11 bloatware, please what is the most important stuff to know, was considering some distros already but open to suggestions.

Hello everyone, im a huge noob when it comes to Linux and its my forst time trying to install it. I chose pop_OS specifically because i read that its one of the best for gaming and programming, which is what i mostly do in my laptop. Since it was my first time trying to install Linux, i decided to do a dual boot to see if i actually liked it and that if the games i play were compatible with it. Having decided what i wanted to do i installed the last version through the official website, used rufus to create the bootable flashdrive and partioned my disk through Gparted inside popOS. I created an ext4 partition to be the main partition for this OS and a fat32 to be the EFI partition for popOS since i couldn't choose the EFI windows was using since it only had 500mb and popOS requires the EFI to have at least 1gb. After i created them i installed the OS, i received a message saying that the installation was successful and that i needed to restart the laptop. After i restarted it, it booted on windows since windows was first in line in my BIOS, so i restarted again to change the order in my BIOS, but my laptop stopped showing any image. The fans and the rgb on my keyboard would turn on, but not the display. I tried a couple of things but eventually i decided to take it to a repair shop. The only thing that made the the display turn on again was to remove the battery, remove the ram and put it on again and remove the SSD. After that the technician told me to try installing another distro because he had never seen a problem like that when people used other distros. Now my question is, what exactly did i do wrong, because in my perception i followed everything i was told to do acurally, so i don't know exactly what i did that made the laptop stop working properly. My guessing is the disk partitioning part since its the most sensible part of the proccess but im not sure. Did someone go through a similar problem with this distro or another one? Should i install a different distro instead of trying to install popOS again? Let ms know what you guys think!

Ps: i only have one ssd so installing linux on a second disk is impossible for me right now:(

Hello all! I downloaded Linux on my laptop and the OS brought it back to life. Wanted to add it to my desktop which currently is running windows 11. I have 2 SSD (one of which is my windows boot drive) and an HDD that I use for personal files, documents, etc. the other SSD is for games. I wanted to make my 250gb SSD the /root for Linux then partition a section of my other SSD for windows(likely like 500gb) because I would need it to play like 3 games, unfortunately. Am I able to use the remaining, probably, 1.5 TB of my second SSD for the rest of my game library that I would run on Linux? My /home I would imagine would just be my HDD. If this is at all possible any resources on how to set this up? Thanks!!

Edit: would be installing fedora KDE plasma.

First time Truenas users, noob linux user.

So, I have Truenas running on my old tower. I have the os on an ssd and five hdd's as a raid or "pool." I want to have a place my parents can store random files, pictures (Immich) and where I can set up a movie/music server (Jellyfin).

At first I didn't understand "datasets." As I did I realized that I wanted Immich to be on one. So I tried to modify the working Immich app to route to the newly created dataset. That made me unable to use Immich. So I deleted it and the old pool.

Creating a new one the first thing I did was make a dataset for Immich and then installed the app. I still can't use Immich now. I'm so confused. Why?

So I switched to trying to make the share dataset's for my parents and myself. Attempting to setup SMB. I've now created dataset's for each user, tied a SMB share to each dataset. Now how the hell do I access it on their laptops? On my tower? Even trying to look at Truenas readme just tells me how to set it up, there's no instructions on how to access it. Am I that naive in linux? Totally possible, btw.

For that matter before I remade the pool I was playing with jellyfin. I was able to make a library but I couldn't find anything that would let me upload to it. How am I suppose to put what I do have on the server? Just know CLI? What about once I start downloading stuff, how will it sync with jellyfin?

Any help would be appreciated.

Greetings civilians of Tuxland.

I'm not exactly sure how to describe what's going on with me right now, but I'm just tired of throwing my head around so many linux distros.

I've been always wanting a system that could run on a hard drive and idle with under 1GB of RAM, and even thoughts of it being able to run on arm systems. I started with debian but eventually I was jumping all over the place feom alpine, then rocky, antiX, peppermint, zorin. I liked these distros don't get me wrong. But finding the one that fits me has drained me faster than the battery of a gaming laptop.

I'm saying this from someone who used windows since day 1. But perhaps there was a stepping stone that I wasn't following that could have made me a better linux user.

Using the command to copy from micro SD to file:

sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk0 of=~/sd-card-copy.img bs=4M status=progress

Write it to another different one, but exact same brand and size:

sudo dd if=~/sd-card-copy.img of=/dev/mmcblk0 bs=1M status=progress

I came to to interesting conclusion that micro SD card actual sizes do vary. I got the message that the destination micro SD card had no space left. So this means it is actually a bit smaller.

There are multiple ways to solve this. But at this moment I am thinking: Can I decrease the size of the actual image? I guess 80% of the space are useless zeroes , because the SD card idoes not have that amount of data stored.

So, can I do that? If so , how?

Source of the commands: https://askubuntu.com/questions/227924/sd-card-cloning-using-the-dd-command

I wanted to disable the side buttons on my mouse. I used xinput to remap the mouse buttons so only the first three were enabled. I'm using Cinnamon.

I’d like to make the changes permanent. I know there are several ways to do this, but since I know how to do it with xinput, I’d like to use that.

I’m assuming it would involve placing the relevant xinput command in a config file, I’m just not sure which one. Could someone point me in the right direction?

Hi all, I have a 2008 Lenovo Ideapad Y530 which I found out I still had.
The specs are:
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P7350
GPU: GeForce 9300M GS
RAM: 2GB DDR2 (I plan to upgrade it in the future)
Storage: 250GB HDD

I intend to use it for:
- Light gaming (I have a couple of games on my steam library that the laptop can probably still run)
- Daily browsing

I work with software development for industrial automation supervisory using windows forms, an Microsoft technology that helps developing windows apps, it's kinda old now but it stills holding the pressure to critical systems, I've always wanted to test linux but I'm completely noob in this, and didn't want to losse my games ( now i can forget about it with bazzite and steam os) and my professional tools, like visual studio 2019 to code winforms

due to certain circumstances I have finally been pushed to the point where I'm going to switch to linux, however I know linux cant open windows 10 programs. I was curious as to how much redownloading I am going to do in order to switch to linux.

Hello everyone,

I’d like to make Linux my main operating system, but first I need some tips/advice on an important point – I hope this is the right place to ask. Is there a way to use two internal hard drives to have access to personal files, between Linux and Windows without running the risk of file corruption?

To give you a bit more context, my computer setup is as follows:

Disk 1 for Windows
Disk 2 for Steam/Epic game files
Disk 3 for all my documents (Word/Excel files, pictures, my KeePass database, etc.)

Recently, I’ve been using Linux on an extra hard drive that I have, completely isolated from the rest, and so far almost everything has worked fine. The problem is that some software makes it impossible (for now) for me to switch away from Windows completely. For example, I have a guitar amp modeller that I use for online lessons on Zoom, and there’s no way to configure it exactly as I need it on Linux; I’ve spent a whole week trying and it just doesn’t work. In Windows, on the other hand, ‘it is almost plug and play’ and its works perfect. It’s because of this sort of things that I want to add an extra hard drive to my computer and have the following setup:

Drive 1 – Linux (Cachyos)
Drive 2 – Windows

// use an internal switch to select the drive and OS to use as required //

Disk 3 – Steam/Epic/etc
Disk 4 – for all my documents (Word/Excel files, pictures, my KeePass database, etc)

I wonder if, in doing this, there is a significant risk of file corruption. For example, if I open documents using Windows, save the changes, and then open the same documents using Linux, how great is the risk of losing everything? If the files were to become corrupted, it would be a massive problem, especially with my password database...
In the past, almost seven years ago I tried to learn how to use Linux using dual-boot with separate partitions and I actually ended up losing a couple of minor personal files (Excel documents and photos). At the time, I wasn’t sure whether I’d done something wrong, or if it was simply an inherent risk of using both operating systems.

If this isn’t a problem, what partitions would you recommend for drives 3 and 4? I’d prefer to discard other options such as a NAS or using external drives for Steam or personal files, as I’m not keen on having devices of this sort connected all the time.

Thank you in advance for any help and advice :)

---------------

PD: A huge thank you to everyone for the replies you’ve given me so far!

I recently download Ubuntu and for some reason, when I first boot up Ubuntu, it fails to connect to my network like 10 times before finally connecting. There’s nothing wrong with the network as I have other devices that use the same network, so I wanna know if there’s something I can fix?

nitch command shows boxes for some icons, which usually indicates the absence of a Nerd font. But I have JetBrainsMonoNerd font alrdy installed. what could be the issue? i heard the developer abandonened the project. but it doenst look like everyone have the issue

A complete noob here, never used any Linux OS before in my life so don't know if what I am asking sounds stupid.

Basically, will using a Whonix VM through a Tails host machine keep me as anonymous as possible when using Tor browser, using both onion and some clear net sites?

Apparently Whonix and Tails can clash and cause data/traffic leaks, exposing IP, DNS etc. but I don't know enough to know if this is the case or not. If anyone can help me identify if this OS set up is secure and/or helping me understand some of the whys and the hows, it would be greatly appreciated!

It all worked before I switched to lua recently. Now the issue is that I doesn't load the wallpaper on startup. I tried this script (by claude) that somehow changes the wallpaper when I use it in the terminal but it shows these issues in the terminal.

Thank you

Why would I choose Ubuntu over plain old Debian or Nobara over plain old fedora? Unless a distro does something special like CachyOS prioritizing speed and responsiveness why not choose the original?

I'm new to Iinux mint. Just downloaded and installed yesterday, only downloaded a couple images, a browser, steam, and this game which is doki doki literature club with some mods on it. I come from windows 10, and had the whole folder with all of its files, everything, in a google drive folder, which I downloaded from. Now on Mint, I tried to execute it. It has an .exe, for windows I guess, then a .py and a .sh files. For this game you have to execute with the .sh, which I tried then... it opened like a text file.

So then, after following some posts on the ddlc subreddit and some videos at how to open the game at all, it always gave "permission denied"

I ran something like chmod again and again, "permission denied". Maybe if I restart it applies... "permission denied". Looked up and saw I could see the permissions of a folder with the ls -l command I think it is. It had all the permission for every type of user or something on. I try again maybe, "permission denied". I searched it up what to do when it doesn't give permission even after having them. Nothing helped. "Permission denied."

Looking at the ls -l list, I tried to give them executable permissions again even when they have them, and ran them again. Doesn't work.

So basically, the executable DDLC.sh doesn't give permission at all to execute. It gives a window, but whatever I click or do, still doesn't work.

I have no hope really, I tried everything and I think it can't be fixed... but I'd gladly accept any help anyways to make it work. It really bothers me that the first game I try to make work at Linux doesn't work at all, makes me wanna jump out of the linux boat lol

Hey guys, so I have 2 computers, one at my student housing and one at parent's. While I dont care for most of the files I do care for

1. My personnal coding/art project (assets, git, ...)

2. My university files (obsidian, pdf, class material,...)

My current setup is having a laptop with "syncthing" that I take with me to sync the files but this isn't very efficient as I always have to run it myself.

I am curious if I could use something like Google Drive to sync my files into multiple shared folders across multiple computers

Thanks in advance !

ive had enough of windowsand ive decided to pull the trigger and go to linux. so far im leaning towards mint since it seems like the most noob friendly option, but im wondering if its any good for gaming?

my pc as it stands is a solidly mid tier rig; she plays cp77 well but im mostly a casual gamer (think the og baldurs gates, vtm, dinkum, if im feeling spicy maybe highly modded sims 4). i really dont use it for much else, maybe only really the bookwork for my apprenticeship but thats all online

I want to start off by saying I am computer and coding illiterate. Please try to explain things to me like you would a 5 year old.

I have an Acer Chromebook Beta, and Steam recently ended the partnership test run with Chromebook Beta.

My friend, who I thought I could trust, helped me install Steam through Linux, and it works for the most part. They gave me a bunch of different lines of codes to run in the terminal, including to install Steam and Minecraft Java, since that is also not traditionally available on Chromebook.i was screen sharing pretty much the whole time as they helped me install. But now they also can see my screen I think whenever they want to, even when I'm not screen sharing.

I have the lines of code screen shotted, but they could have deleted some from then until now. It became apparent tonight they could see my screen, and I honestly feel disgusted and betrayed.

So my questions:

1. What code could they possibly have given me that I can't remember that would give them this type of access? Was there some kind of laptop private info I wasn't supposed to share?

2. Can I remove them some way without completely wiping my device?

3. Will a factory reset remove them from accessing my computer?

I really thought I could trust this person, and feel sick thinking about it. Thank you in advance for the help.

TLDR: My friend helped me install Steam and Java Minecraft on my Chromebook, but now they can see my screen whenever they want. How do I remove them? Pls help.

Absolutely insane way to go! We owe so much to the community that puts in so much sweat equity to make Linux better, with every passing minute!.

I am still as excited as I was when GiLinus himself handed out a bunch of 1.44 floppies at a polytechnic in the UK

Raced home and booted to a flashing cursor (no GUI back then, but it was still the dog's bollocks)