Okay, I've finally done it: I went linux. Not the "lemme take this prehistoric laptop, throw some distro on it, watch grub in action, install steam and a few games, game on it, feel like I'm making a statement and then put it back to gather dust" kind of "going linux". I installed it on my main computer. On a dual-boot that currently still auto-launches windows 10 after five seconds, but with the intention of completely migrating. And that means...I'm on a rambling spree.
PREFACE
Truth be told, I've been doing half-assed steps in the direction for some time now. The aforementioned "trying some distros" is one. Using libreoffice for years. Swapped my preferredporn image viewer for one that has a linux client. Things like that. I knew it'd still be a big plunge: I'm one of those thinker types that collects all sorts of little program doodads that make my life easier. Having to find alternatives is one reason I've postponed to for so long (meaning: I'm lazy).
Of course my windows 10 isn't what it was when it first arrived on my PC either. It has these moments where, instead of loading a web page, it just hangs as this "waiting for cache..." message. I'm not sure why it's waiting on something that should be already on the drive (on an SSD, no less), but I got fed up with it being busy doing things. The "it" is the entire PC, by the way...apparently loading a web page is enough to block the entire rest of the PC apart from the ever-important ability to move the mouse cursor. I'm sure I'm not the only one who got that thing that I'd like to call delayed multitasking: because opening a page doesn't work, you try opening a second page. Then attempt to restart the browser. Then attempt to close that one windows that was still open. Pick your nose. And so on, if for nothing else to feel like doing SOMETHING is better than nothing...and then it suddenly opens up your page twice, closes it, closes that other windows, picks your nose and does "and so on" all in a fraction of a second. It's annoying...but never enough to deal with.
It's also annoying that malwarebytes insists that crxmouse gestures is a trojan (followed by lots of other non-shady sites). I've come to accept that avast has evolved from this robust free antivirus scanner to this pop-up program that tells me that it can improve my PC's speed tenfold...if I upgrade to premium version(1).
The most recent of these antics - and the last straw for me - was that all of the sudden my windows clock sets itself exactly two hours earlier than the real time. Disabling and then re-enabling automatic time fixes it, but why does it do that every freaking reboot? Was the code that shows the time really in for an update?
Anyhow...I just wanted to leave that stuff behind me. Granted: steam's proton was a large influence as well, but still...it was about time I moved over. I can't be bothered with the internet slut-shaming people that use the operating system of a company that apparently randomly deletes your data (on that note: how the hell did you manage to use windows sincs 1995 without ever creating a backup?).
INITIAL STEPS, PRINTING
I've hesitated between linux mint and manjaro. From what I can tell it's a split finish between the two, and I only went mint because I knew it longer.
First boot went as smooth as on my test laptops, but I almost immediately ran into my first problem: the printer wasn't recognized. No, wait...worse: it WAS properly recognized, initialized and configured. It was just that when I made a test page, mint said all went fine and dandy and my printer (an old HP 1020) just went "huh? Print something? Naaaaaah".
I won't lie: I expected some quirks. My main desktop is a mishmash of all sorts of partitions, reasonably old hardware, custom configuration scripts and junk like that. And on hindsight: troubleshooting wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. You see: at this time you can pretty much google any windows problem and find dozens of answers. Since linux is far less popular and that smaller population is split over even more distributions, I initially feared that I'd be out of luck. I was wrong...but I started with what I got the thing for: tinkering with settings!
It wasn't very successful. The UI was certainly more clear than some windows printer menu's, but I swear some people mashed their keyboard when they had to come up with a name of the default drivers (I'll look it up, but it was something like choosing between slighqhkjl, mkjqmflkjqer and qpokushjfoirhu). I've tried all three, but aside from a hiccup of the printer on one of those: nothing.
After some googling, I've managed to set it up by installing something called "hplip-gui". I admit I like the community's whole "here...put this in yer terminal and watch it fly" rather than windows users' approach of "here's a link to hp.com" that's basically an invite to a hall of mirrors (ever tried finding drivers for old devices? if they're not on the publisher's site, you can only get them by essentially getting them from the equivalent of Mad Boris in a dark alley. I don't know who made that hplip-thingy (probably disgruntled HP employees who disliked all the bloatware), but congratulations: your support for old stuff is BETTER than on windows.
SHORTCUTS
Second...a minor annoyance: steam suddenly decided that games shouldn't need shortcuts anymore. This is a pretty weird issue that only happens on some games. But thus far, I haven't figured out why it happens.
In the same vein: shortcuts in general. I'm a keyboard junky, and I truly miss executor. That's a simple launcher that lets you define keyboard shortcuts, that allow you to quickly launch the programs, folders,... you want, with parameter if you want it to. There are similar launchers (I've tried synapse and kupfer), but while they work razorfast in opening what you have already on your hard drive, I honestly can't seem to find how to assign my own shortcuts to them (which I can only assume must be possible, because you want a launcher to be fitted to YOUR level, not the other way around).
Creating shortcuts isn't as straightforward as in windows either. I'm not sure if this is mint-exclusive, but it doesn't like to create shortcuts to another drive anywhere but on the desktop (though you can move them around afterwards).
OTHER PARTITIONS
Another struggle was with clementine. AIMP is another music player that doesn't exist in linux (I haven't thrown wine at it), so I went with clementine. I like the interface and way it handles, but despite its stability I almost removed it. Why? Because it insisted on rechecking my entire library every restart. It took me a while to figure out why: this is on a separate disk. Windows auto-mounts it, but mint doesn't. It was a matter of finding and correcting the issue where it appeared. Meaning: I had to set that drive and another to auto-mount, and the problem solved itself.
...or so I thought. After a few days, I noticed that this auto-mount decided that read only was enough. Granted: it IS enough most of the time. But I'm not really sure how to approach the main issue. Using the "Disks" program in linux mint, I thought I was able to properly mount the two partitions on that drive. It certainly seemed that way on first glance. I mean...I could see and read everything. Since this was mostly a backup storage (how often do you add music to your 10-year-old library?) it took me a couple days to notice...that it was read-only. A certain mr. root was owner of the drive, and I wasn't root. Yyyyyyeeeeeaaaaahhhh...
Look: I get it. Windows is inherently "potentially unsafe" because you're defaulting to the administrator. Having to enter the root password in linux every time you want to intall something is something I can live with because that only happens when I want to install something. But this whole "whoah, buddy. Just because there's this unprotected hard drive in my system doesn't mean that you can just, y'know...MOUNT IT AS A WRITEABLE DRIVE" thing starts getting on my nerve.
Luckily, I found a web page of someone with 99% the same problem (he had three of these partitions, I had only two). That someone was immediately greeted by someone who suggested he changed a few lines in the /etc/fstab file (I had no idea that that info was there to begin with). The guy with that problem was immediately helped, praised the one offering the solution, was counter-welcomed to the linux flock by a few others, and everything was nice.
...I tried the same thing, and all I got was the same read-only drive. No, wait...not really: that initial auto-mounting that the disk had done had politely named the drives 2DDFZER51231SDFSF and 2DDFZER512QSD512S. Though I considered that a grade up from the limited drive convention at microsoft(2)(3), it wasn't quite as intuitive. At least I was able to rename this to the slightly more intuitive names 'Stuff' and 'Games'. So I got experience points for serendipity, but am thus far still stuck with the original problem. Perhaps I'll find the answer to this by investigating a DIFFERENT problem.
MANUAL INSTALLS
Popcorn time is another "issue". More specifically: it's the most linux-y installation yet. I quickly found this guide with pretty straightforward instructions on each step. While certainly harder than installing anything on windows or a mobile device, it's not really more complex than it needs to be. And it's a great way to learn how to PROPERLY use linux. I mean...look: I once took a class on android, mistakenly expecting it would be about understanding the system, rooting the devices and exploring the capabilities...I ran off when I learned that it was a course for 'those seniors' who took proud in "being able to turn it on", and "sending a text message". This, my friends, is part of why linux is awesome. Not because it IS awesome, but because it is at least abstruse enough to scare away the people who want to know why their e-mail doesn't leave their draft folder until they click "send".
Don't get me wrong: I like the software repositories. In fact, I'd even declare them a must if it wasn't for the implications we're already seeing (microsoft attempts to reinvent itself with the app store without leaving the traditional path, and apple downright has their store acting as a gatekeeper). They're convenient, quick and don't provide a hassle for the user. The other side of the coin is that as a user, they make it that all you need to know is how to spell the software you want and the root administrator password. Those popcorn time installation instructions help getting some commands under my belt (I loved writing scripts in MS-DOS when I was a kid). And because some friends stormed in about halfway through, I made an impression on one of 'em (the girlfriend of the brother of my girlfriend); she thought I was hacking my system.
GRUB
Grub is also one of the little quirks. Of course I didn't bin my windows partition, and luckily mint provided a nice grub-config predefined setup that sets a dual-boot screen that pits linux mint, linux mint troubleshooting, linux mint last working config...and boring old windows 10 in one nicely convenient list together. It initially booted up linux mint after 5 seconds, but that unfortunately won't do. The reason: my girlfriend is convinced she'll never get the hang of another operating system(4) and insists that it should at least auto-boot to windows.
Now...while I'm certainly proficient enough to follow tutorials on that, I honestly don't want to mess things up. It's one thing to accidentally mistake a "makedir \etc\mnt\qdfpohqfpuhqf" command with a "makedir \etc\mnt\qdfpohqfpunqf" command: those things leave you being the laughing stock of the internet at worst for a stupid mount point(5). If that grub-configuration has an error on it, there is no safe booting to the last known configuration or even to <*gasp*> windows. If it fails, it'll turn my precious pc in an aquarium. It'll hold all my files hostage, quarantine my cloud savegames and erase my existence from this dimension!
...okay, probably not THAT drastic, but I don't want to find out. So I went with a nifty little tool called grubanalyzer EDIT: this should've been grub-customizer (sorry) . I've used it on old laptops to have them boot multiple OS'es, so I thought it'd be easy.
In a way, it was. Install from software repository, run, set windows 10 as default OS after ten seconds. No complaints on that front: it worked and did all that it needed to do. The strange thing, however, is that it insists on calling my mint operating system (or systems, if you count the troubleshooting entries) "ubuntu". And because it seemed like a cool touch, I thought I'd redecorate things a bit using some color and a background that would show my girlfriend who's the man of the house.
...except that that part didn't do anything. At first I assumed it'd be the picture background dimensions, but no matter what I do, it somehow either doesn't save or doesn't click despite the program saying that all is dandy. Hmm...
CONCLUSIONS (FOR NOW)
I hope I don't come across as someone who bitches about all things linux. I'm not. The above are luxury problems. Especially now that I've got my music player working, I can easily spend an hour on checking sites and trying out different solutions that mostly fail for some reason. That's okay: I'm a tinkerer. For the most part, I'm on par with what I can do on windows (though I'm not kidding when I miss executor), and as far as my software library goes: most of what I like have ports on linux to begin with (6).
(1): I had done that once for a year. I wouldn't mind doing it again, if it wasn't from one thing I learned at the end: at the end of that year, there were MORE pop-ups and beg screens than before. I wanted to help out the avast programmers...not being loaded with guild for not repaying them year after year.
(2): a question for you youngsters: why is your main windows hard drive your C-drive? Answer: it's because the A-drive is reserved for "regular" floppy disks while the B-drive is reserved for actual floppies. And no, I'm not kidding: that convention is still around LONG after those things went extinct.
(3): your average household only has a handful of drives and partitions, so the 24-limit (C->Z) on these things are only a hypothetical limitation. However, microoft also allows to mount network locations as "virtual drives" as such a letter. The result is that on all three of my jobs I had to create lists with the full network locations because people who lost files "on the K-drive" had no idea that the K-drive for THEIR department could be radically different than that same "K-drive" from another department
(4): this, of course, despite the fact that she has an android phone and an apple tablet
(5): I admit it: I'm not even sure I understand what a mount point is to begin with.
(6): weird side-effect I hadn't considered: probably all pirate sites offer cracked WINDOWS versions of games. As such, it's harder to pirate on linux
PREFACE
Truth be told, I've been doing half-assed steps in the direction for some time now. The aforementioned "trying some distros" is one. Using libreoffice for years. Swapped my preferred
Of course my windows 10 isn't what it was when it first arrived on my PC either. It has these moments where, instead of loading a web page, it just hangs as this "waiting for cache..." message. I'm not sure why it's waiting on something that should be already on the drive (on an SSD, no less), but I got fed up with it being busy doing things. The "it" is the entire PC, by the way...apparently loading a web page is enough to block the entire rest of the PC apart from the ever-important ability to move the mouse cursor. I'm sure I'm not the only one who got that thing that I'd like to call delayed multitasking: because opening a page doesn't work, you try opening a second page. Then attempt to restart the browser. Then attempt to close that one windows that was still open. Pick your nose. And so on, if for nothing else to feel like doing SOMETHING is better than nothing...and then it suddenly opens up your page twice, closes it, closes that other windows, picks your nose and does "and so on" all in a fraction of a second. It's annoying...but never enough to deal with.
It's also annoying that malwarebytes insists that crxmouse gestures is a trojan (followed by lots of other non-shady sites). I've come to accept that avast has evolved from this robust free antivirus scanner to this pop-up program that tells me that it can improve my PC's speed tenfold...if I upgrade to premium version(1).
The most recent of these antics - and the last straw for me - was that all of the sudden my windows clock sets itself exactly two hours earlier than the real time. Disabling and then re-enabling automatic time fixes it, but why does it do that every freaking reboot? Was the code that shows the time really in for an update?
Anyhow...I just wanted to leave that stuff behind me. Granted: steam's proton was a large influence as well, but still...it was about time I moved over. I can't be bothered with the internet slut-shaming people that use the operating system of a company that apparently randomly deletes your data (on that note: how the hell did you manage to use windows sincs 1995 without ever creating a backup?).
INITIAL STEPS, PRINTING
I've hesitated between linux mint and manjaro. From what I can tell it's a split finish between the two, and I only went mint because I knew it longer.
First boot went as smooth as on my test laptops, but I almost immediately ran into my first problem: the printer wasn't recognized. No, wait...worse: it WAS properly recognized, initialized and configured. It was just that when I made a test page, mint said all went fine and dandy and my printer (an old HP 1020) just went "huh? Print something? Naaaaaah".
I won't lie: I expected some quirks. My main desktop is a mishmash of all sorts of partitions, reasonably old hardware, custom configuration scripts and junk like that. And on hindsight: troubleshooting wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. You see: at this time you can pretty much google any windows problem and find dozens of answers. Since linux is far less popular and that smaller population is split over even more distributions, I initially feared that I'd be out of luck. I was wrong...but I started with what I got the thing for: tinkering with settings!
It wasn't very successful. The UI was certainly more clear than some windows printer menu's, but I swear some people mashed their keyboard when they had to come up with a name of the default drivers (I'll look it up, but it was something like choosing between slighqhkjl, mkjqmflkjqer and qpokushjfoirhu). I've tried all three, but aside from a hiccup of the printer on one of those: nothing.
After some googling, I've managed to set it up by installing something called "hplip-gui". I admit I like the community's whole "here...put this in yer terminal and watch it fly" rather than windows users' approach of "here's a link to hp.com" that's basically an invite to a hall of mirrors (ever tried finding drivers for old devices? if they're not on the publisher's site, you can only get them by essentially getting them from the equivalent of Mad Boris in a dark alley. I don't know who made that hplip-thingy (probably disgruntled HP employees who disliked all the bloatware), but congratulations: your support for old stuff is BETTER than on windows.
SHORTCUTS
Second...a minor annoyance: steam suddenly decided that games shouldn't need shortcuts anymore. This is a pretty weird issue that only happens on some games. But thus far, I haven't figured out why it happens.
In the same vein: shortcuts in general. I'm a keyboard junky, and I truly miss executor. That's a simple launcher that lets you define keyboard shortcuts, that allow you to quickly launch the programs, folders,... you want, with parameter if you want it to. There are similar launchers (I've tried synapse and kupfer), but while they work razorfast in opening what you have already on your hard drive, I honestly can't seem to find how to assign my own shortcuts to them (which I can only assume must be possible, because you want a launcher to be fitted to YOUR level, not the other way around).
Creating shortcuts isn't as straightforward as in windows either. I'm not sure if this is mint-exclusive, but it doesn't like to create shortcuts to another drive anywhere but on the desktop (though you can move them around afterwards).
OTHER PARTITIONS
Another struggle was with clementine. AIMP is another music player that doesn't exist in linux (I haven't thrown wine at it), so I went with clementine. I like the interface and way it handles, but despite its stability I almost removed it. Why? Because it insisted on rechecking my entire library every restart. It took me a while to figure out why: this is on a separate disk. Windows auto-mounts it, but mint doesn't. It was a matter of finding and correcting the issue where it appeared. Meaning: I had to set that drive and another to auto-mount, and the problem solved itself.
...or so I thought. After a few days, I noticed that this auto-mount decided that read only was enough. Granted: it IS enough most of the time. But I'm not really sure how to approach the main issue. Using the "Disks" program in linux mint, I thought I was able to properly mount the two partitions on that drive. It certainly seemed that way on first glance. I mean...I could see and read everything. Since this was mostly a backup storage (how often do you add music to your 10-year-old library?) it took me a couple days to notice...that it was read-only. A certain mr. root was owner of the drive, and I wasn't root. Yyyyyyeeeeeaaaaahhhh...
Look: I get it. Windows is inherently "potentially unsafe" because you're defaulting to the administrator. Having to enter the root password in linux every time you want to intall something is something I can live with because that only happens when I want to install something. But this whole "whoah, buddy. Just because there's this unprotected hard drive in my system doesn't mean that you can just, y'know...MOUNT IT AS A WRITEABLE DRIVE" thing starts getting on my nerve.
Luckily, I found a web page of someone with 99% the same problem (he had three of these partitions, I had only two). That someone was immediately greeted by someone who suggested he changed a few lines in the /etc/fstab file (I had no idea that that info was there to begin with). The guy with that problem was immediately helped, praised the one offering the solution, was counter-welcomed to the linux flock by a few others, and everything was nice.
...I tried the same thing, and all I got was the same read-only drive. No, wait...not really: that initial auto-mounting that the disk had done had politely named the drives 2DDFZER51231SDFSF and 2DDFZER512QSD512S. Though I considered that a grade up from the limited drive convention at microsoft(2)(3), it wasn't quite as intuitive. At least I was able to rename this to the slightly more intuitive names 'Stuff' and 'Games'. So I got experience points for serendipity, but am thus far still stuck with the original problem. Perhaps I'll find the answer to this by investigating a DIFFERENT problem.
MANUAL INSTALLS
Popcorn time is another "issue". More specifically: it's the most linux-y installation yet. I quickly found this guide with pretty straightforward instructions on each step. While certainly harder than installing anything on windows or a mobile device, it's not really more complex than it needs to be. And it's a great way to learn how to PROPERLY use linux. I mean...look: I once took a class on android, mistakenly expecting it would be about understanding the system, rooting the devices and exploring the capabilities...I ran off when I learned that it was a course for 'those seniors' who took proud in "being able to turn it on", and "sending a text message". This, my friends, is part of why linux is awesome. Not because it IS awesome, but because it is at least abstruse enough to scare away the people who want to know why their e-mail doesn't leave their draft folder until they click "send".
Don't get me wrong: I like the software repositories. In fact, I'd even declare them a must if it wasn't for the implications we're already seeing (microsoft attempts to reinvent itself with the app store without leaving the traditional path, and apple downright has their store acting as a gatekeeper). They're convenient, quick and don't provide a hassle for the user. The other side of the coin is that as a user, they make it that all you need to know is how to spell the software you want and the root administrator password. Those popcorn time installation instructions help getting some commands under my belt (I loved writing scripts in MS-DOS when I was a kid). And because some friends stormed in about halfway through, I made an impression on one of 'em (the girlfriend of the brother of my girlfriend); she thought I was hacking my system.
GRUB
Grub is also one of the little quirks. Of course I didn't bin my windows partition, and luckily mint provided a nice grub-config predefined setup that sets a dual-boot screen that pits linux mint, linux mint troubleshooting, linux mint last working config...and boring old windows 10 in one nicely convenient list together. It initially booted up linux mint after 5 seconds, but that unfortunately won't do. The reason: my girlfriend is convinced she'll never get the hang of another operating system(4) and insists that it should at least auto-boot to windows.
Now...while I'm certainly proficient enough to follow tutorials on that, I honestly don't want to mess things up. It's one thing to accidentally mistake a "makedir \etc\mnt\qdfpohqfpuhqf" command with a "makedir \etc\mnt\qdfpohqfpunqf" command: those things leave you being the laughing stock of the internet at worst for a stupid mount point(5). If that grub-configuration has an error on it, there is no safe booting to the last known configuration or even to <*gasp*> windows. If it fails, it'll turn my precious pc in an aquarium. It'll hold all my files hostage, quarantine my cloud savegames and erase my existence from this dimension!
...okay, probably not THAT drastic, but I don't want to find out. So I went with a nifty little tool called grub
. I've used it on old laptops to have them boot multiple OS'es, so I thought it'd be easy.In a way, it was. Install from software repository, run, set windows 10 as default OS after ten seconds. No complaints on that front: it worked and did all that it needed to do. The strange thing, however, is that it insists on calling my mint operating system (or systems, if you count the troubleshooting entries) "ubuntu". And because it seemed like a cool touch, I thought I'd redecorate things a bit using some color and a background that would show my girlfriend who's the man of the house.
...except that that part didn't do anything. At first I assumed it'd be the picture background dimensions, but no matter what I do, it somehow either doesn't save or doesn't click despite the program saying that all is dandy. Hmm...
CONCLUSIONS (FOR NOW)
I hope I don't come across as someone who bitches about all things linux. I'm not. The above are luxury problems. Especially now that I've got my music player working, I can easily spend an hour on checking sites and trying out different solutions that mostly fail for some reason. That's okay: I'm a tinkerer. For the most part, I'm on par with what I can do on windows (though I'm not kidding when I miss executor), and as far as my software library goes: most of what I like have ports on linux to begin with (6).
(1): I had done that once for a year. I wouldn't mind doing it again, if it wasn't from one thing I learned at the end: at the end of that year, there were MORE pop-ups and beg screens than before. I wanted to help out the avast programmers...not being loaded with guild for not repaying them year after year.
(2): a question for you youngsters: why is your main windows hard drive your C-drive? Answer: it's because the A-drive is reserved for "regular" floppy disks while the B-drive is reserved for actual floppies. And no, I'm not kidding: that convention is still around LONG after those things went extinct.
(3): your average household only has a handful of drives and partitions, so the 24-limit (C->Z) on these things are only a hypothetical limitation. However, microoft also allows to mount network locations as "virtual drives" as such a letter. The result is that on all three of my jobs I had to create lists with the full network locations because people who lost files "on the K-drive" had no idea that the K-drive for THEIR department could be radically different than that same "K-drive" from another department
(4): this, of course, despite the fact that she has an android phone and an apple tablet
(5): I admit it: I'm not even sure I understand what a mount point is to begin with.
(6): weird side-effect I hadn't considered: probably all pirate sites offer cracked WINDOWS versions of games. As such, it's harder to pirate on linux
