Linux for Idiots, By Idiots

[Reciever]

I'd figure I would make a thread like this for people to give Linux a try and reach out for Linux assistance. You know it feels like the thing you are missing is just RIGHT there but have no idea what you are doing but dont want to make an account at those supposedly abrasive Linux forums to made the laughing stock. 

 

Just to be clear, me making this thread is also so I can participate, as I am an idiot. Its time to wear the badge with honor! 

 

Tonight I have installed Manjaro MATE on my AM4 system.

 

2700x @ 4.1 

32GB DDR4 3200Mhz

256GB SSD Boot

1TB mSATA Games (hopefully)

5700XT

 

Soon to be getting Steam running and hopefully overnight download a few titles

 

[Etern4l]

I do like MATE - light, yet quite configurable and pleasing. Have fun.

[Reciever]

Ran into issue already lol

 

I formatted the 1TB drive to use it for Steam Games but I cant create the folder as its default to Read-Only.

 

So tomorrow I get to look how to make that drive r/w, in the meantime I am installing a game on the root drive just for testing FPS in Ace Combat 7

[Etern4l]

It's good security practice to set pernissions on per directory basis. Only root user will have permissions to the relative root of the filesystem, so you have to use sudo command to create a directory on the drive and give yourself ownership and permissions to use it:

cd to the root of the mounted drive

sudo mkdir games

sudo chown reciever games

sudo chmod u+rwx games

 

There might be a way to mount the filesystem such that to grant your user ownership too.

You can probably achieve the above using some GUI file managers, as long as you are clear on the concept of *nix file ownership and permissions (user/group/others). 

HTH

[Reciever]

You would figure there would be some detail or notification that it will need to be made writeable after mounting > formatting since those actions are to make the drive useable. Perhaps this is just how Gparted handles it.

 

New users will have no idea where to find the newly formatted drive since its technically not the root of its own directory from what I can tell. This is probably where a lot of people get frustrated and give up. If I ever make any guides, that will probably be where I would start just for the people that want to see if they can play their games without having to understand the file structure.

[kojack]

I will be in with some questions soon.  I am going to put some sort of distro on my acer 7720 beast today for shats and giggles.  Whats one of the best lightweight ones?  Elementary OS was a decent one on my 2007 macbook.  

[Etern4l]

3 hours ago, Reciever said:

You would figure there would be some detail or notification that it will need to be made writeable after mounting > formatting since those actions are to make the drive useable. Perhaps this is just how Gparted handles it.

 

New users will have no idea where to find the newly formatted drive since its technically not the root of its own directory from what I can tell. This is probably where a lot of people get frustrated and give up. If I ever make any guides, that will probably be where I would start just for the people that want to see if they can play their games without having to understand the file structure.

 

The behaviour may well vary depending on the distro. I wouldn't think Manjaro is the most beginner-friendly one. 

[Reciever]

11 hours ago, Etern4l said:

 

The behaviour may well vary depending on the distro. I wouldn't think Manjaro is the most beginner-friendly one. 

Windows decided it needed my attention screwing with my mouse, so I didnt get too much time with it today, but Ace Combat 7 worked straight out of the box, no tweaks or anything needed.

 

Going to try my PS4 controller next and see if it plays nice or not, even Windows typically works better with DS4Windows.exe (at least in my experience)

 

I'll try your commands in a bit, I would love to try things like Horizon: Zero Dawn, Monster Hunter World and MGSV:TPP

 

controller works via USB, havent tried anything wireless yet. Even if Steams reasons werent selfless, the result is great thus far.

[Eban]

5 hours ago, Reciever said:

Windows decided it needed my attention screwing with my mouse, so I didnt get too much time with it today, ....

 

 

 

Windoze

[Reciever]

I still havent been able to get the second drive writable and as a result havent used the PC pretty much at all.

 

Drive is located /dev/sdb1 but terminal says its not a directory. Tried a few guides but none of them worked.

 

Guess I'll look for another distro, Im an idiot, but this seems to be unusable.

[Eban]

22 minutes ago, Reciever said:

I still havent been able to get the second drive writable and as a result havent used the PC pretty much at all.

 

Drive is located /dev/sdb1 but terminal says its not a directory. Tried a few guides but none of them worked.

 

Guess I'll look for another distro, Im an idiot, but this seems to be unusable.

I had same issue with ZorinOS

It's just not end user friendly enough.

You need to be a system admin to run it...I want a daily driver not be a sysadmin 

[Reciever]

5 minutes ago, Eban said:

I had same issue with ZorinOS

It's just not end user friendly enough.

You need to be a system admin to run it...I want a daily driver not be a sysadmin 

SteamOS it is!

[Eban]

4 minutes ago, Reciever said:

SteamOS it is!

 

This suggestion is really gimping Linux...but you could try Android for PC?!?!

 

https://www.android-x86.org/

 

I had Bliss running on my Rugged tablet (Dell Latitude 12) for a while

https://blissroms.org/

[Reciever]

48 minutes ago, Eban said:

 

This suggestion is really gimping Linux...but you could try Android for PC?!?!

 

https://www.android-x86.org/

 

I had Bliss running on my Rugged tablet (Dell Latitude 12) for a while

https://blissroms.org/

I had used that in the past with an HP t630 and for what its worth it did pretty good. There was some oddities in the behavior but was pleasantly surprised

[Etern4l]

6 hours ago, Reciever said:

I still havent been able to get the second drive writable and as a result havent used the PC pretty much at all.

 

Drive is located /dev/sdb1 but terminal says its not a directory. Tried a few guides but none of them worked.

 

Guess I'll look for another distro, Im an idiot, but this seems to be unusable.

 

Yeah, I mean Linux is a bit more complicated for sure, and you need to learn a couple of things. In this case, what you were looking at (everything under /dev) is called a block device. This is basically a mechanism to read/write raw data on the drive, and clearly access to that should be limited for security's sake. 

 

What you need to do to make a file system out of this is mount the block device. You do this using mount command - in most cases you don't need to worry about complicated parameters, just need to know which device you want mounted where in the overall filesystem. Obviously, unlike Windows, there are no drive letters.

 

In your cases all you needed to do, assuming you have a /mnt/bigreciever directory (in LInux you mount filesystems into directories, and those directories specify permissions of the root of the mounted filesystem) where you want to mount additional filesystems, is

sudo mkdir /mnt/bigreciever

chown reciever /mnt/bigreciever

chmod u+rwx /mnt/bigreciever (as per the earlier post)

and lastly

sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/bigreciever

 

Thus /mnt/bigreciever would become the mount point of the sub-filesystem contained on /dev/sdb1.

 

Using /mnt as the location for mounted external drives is just one convention, you can mount the drive almost anywhere reasonable.

 

Most linux distros have GUI tools that do all this, usually some file or disk manager. Some generic info links below, look reasonable: 

 

https://www.thegeeksearch.com/understanding-file-systems-and-mount-points-in-linux/

 

https://phoenixnap.com/kb/linux-mount-command

 

Worth mentioning that if you just use mount, this is not persisent. To make it so, you need to use either a GUI tool to look up how it's done

In most distros you still need to edit /etc/fstab

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fstab 

 

but not all of them.

 

BTW in many cases you can learn enough specific info using "man"

e.g. 

man mount

man /etc/fstab

 

HTH

[Mr. Fox]

Hopefully you have room for one more idiot here. One thing that is definitely NOT idiotic is that we all love Linux, or want to learn how to love it.

 

RTX 4090 is working perfectly on KDE...

 

 

I've tested a couple of titles just now...

 

Quake II RTX

Crysis 3 Remastered

 

 

[Reciever]

So streaming to SteamOS uhh let's say it's a work in progress. 

 

 

On to retrying Manjaro 

[Eban]

2 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

...One thing that is definitely NOT idiotic is that we all love Linux, or want to learn how to love it.

 

 

 

 

 

I want to love it.

I will keep following and probably dual boot for another crack.

 

 

 

(Distro hunter)

[Mr. Fox]

Not particularly entertaining, but this guy clearly articulates the reason most Windows users would decide to make the switch. If you can listen to a very calm and dry 10-minute dialogue, I think most of us will find that his comments resonate with us. If you are ADD/ADHD like me, it's going to be hard to watch.

 

 

[Eban]

On 2/14/2023 at 7:34 PM, Mr. Fox said:

Not particularly entertaining, but this guy clearly articulates the reason most Windows users would decide to make the switch. If you can listen to a very calm and dry 10-minute dialogue, I think most of us will find that his comments resonate with us. If you are ADD/ADHD like me, it's going to be hard to watch.

 

 

 

It's not your ADHD....I would say I'm generally patient...but after 3.5mins of watching this guy I wanted to die 

 

[Sandy Bridge]

On 2/11/2023 at 2:37 AM, Etern4l said:

 

In your cases all you needed to do, assuming you have a /mnt/bigreciever directory (in LInux you mount filesystems into directories, and those directories specify permissions of the root of the mounted filesystem) where you want to mount additional filesystems, is

sudo mkdir /mnt/bigreciever

chown reciever /mnt/bigreciever

chmod u+rwx /mnt/bigreciever (as per the earlier post)

and lastly

sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/bigreciever

 

Thus /mnt/bigreciever would become the mount point of the sub-filesystem contained on /dev/sdb1.

 

...

 

Worth mentioning that if you just use mount, this is not persisent. To make it so, you need to use either a GUI tool to look up how it's done

In most distros you still need to edit /etc/fstab

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fstab 

 

but not all of them.

If Linux had a User Experience designer, this would probably be my first example of something they need to improve.  I say this having experienced this same frustration in the past.

 

In Windows, if you plug in a drive that is formatted in a format Windows can understand, within a few seconds it's visible in My Computer has has a drive letter assigned and you can access your data.

 

If it's not formatted, Windows will give you a pop-up saying "The drive you just inserted is not formatted.  Would you like to format it?" and if you choose yes, then a couple minutes later it says, "Formatting is done, which drive letter would you like to use?"  Or something to that effect.

 

I don't know why Linux (using the term to refer to the OS as a whole, not the kernel) couldn't do something similar, saying, "hey, I see you've got a new drive, how do you want to format it?  Where do you want to mount it?  Has to start with /mnt, here is some additional info on conventional names if you want it"  Mint basically does do that via a GUI in its installation, with sensible defaults, so why can't it be done for a secondary drive?  And remembering that info if the drive is connected again seems like a no-brainer, at least as the default option.

 

I sort of know why Linux doesn't do that, unlike Windows it's a decentralized project, with no one in charge of the overall product and user experience.  But I think having that coordination is one of the key things that is necessary if the Year of the Linux Desktop is ever going to arrive.

 

On 2/14/2023 at 4:34 AM, Mr. Fox said:

Not particularly entertaining, but this guy clearly articulates the reason most Windows users would decide to make the switch. If you can listen to a very calm and dry 10-minute dialogue, I think most of us will find that his comments resonate with us. If you are ADD/ADHD like me, it's going to be hard to watch.

 

 

I also made it to about the 3 minute mark before pausing.  At that point he repeated what he'd said at about the 30 second mark - "unless there's special applications [on Windows/Mac].  I get that.  Even then, you could dual boot."  Almost verbatim what he had said before.  And he has a bit of a monotone delivery style.

 

Though I agree with his main point which is that Linux helps you not be surveilled by Big Tech.  And I do hear that as a reason people try out Linux in the real world, usually when their Microsoft OS falls out of support and they'd otherwise have to upgrade to a more-invasive version of Windows.  The "operating system staying out of the way" is also something I've stated as how I want my OS to behave for years now.

 

But he also admits he's a relatively technical user, and while he initially said the terminal was optional, he kind of backtracked on that soon thereafter.  I think that's one of the areas that Linux really needs to get rock solid - making it so that non-technical users can use Linux, without having to look up obscure terminal commands, successfully and reliably.  I agree with his distro choices of Mint and Pop!OS as among the most likely to achieve that.  But if someone as technical as Receiver is running into issues, there remains progress to be made.

 

I will +1 the "get off of social media" too.  Facebook, Twitter, Truth Social... quit them all!  Not just for the privacy aspects, although there is that too, but the mental health benefits of not being on the hamster wheel of endless updates from everyone you know, as well as every organization that has infiltrated your news feed.

 

I wonder if he made the switch off of social media at the same time as switching to Linux, or close to the same time?  He mentioned something like "regaining control of your life" and while it sounded a bit much for just switching to Linux, if he left social media at about the same time I can see how the overall change could amount to that.

[Etern4l]

3 hours ago, Sandy Bridge said:

If Linux had a User Experience designer, this would probably be my first example of something they need to improve.  I say this having experienced this same frustration in the past.

 

In Windows, if you plug in a drive that is formatted in a format Windows can understand, within a few seconds it's visible in My Computer has has a drive letter assigned and you can access your data.

 

If it's not formatted, Windows will give you a pop-up saying "The drive you just inserted is not formatted.  Would you like to format it?" and if you choose yes, then a couple minutes later it says, "Formatting is done, which drive letter would you like to use?"  Or something to that effect.

 

I don't know why Linux (using the term to refer to the OS as a whole, not the kernel) couldn't do something similar, saying, "hey, I see you've got a new drive, how do you want to format it?  Where do you want to mount it?  Has to start with /mnt, here is some additional info on conventional names if you want it"  Mint basically does do that via a GUI in its installation, with sensible defaults, so why can't it be done for a secondary drive?  And remembering that info if the drive is connected again seems like a no-brainer, at least as the default option.

 

I sort of know why Linux doesn't do that, unlike Windows it's a decentralized project, with no one in charge of the overall product and user experience.  But I think having that coordination is one of the key things that is necessary if the Year of the Linux Desktop is ever going to arrive.

 

Yes, Ubuntu, PopOS or Zorin, might have helpful features like that. USB drives just pop in in File Manager GUIs for most distros I think, I don't know what happens if they are not formatted.

 

I am not sure when The Year of Pure Linux Desktop might arrive. The average person would somewhat struggle using Windows. Clever folks like Jobs recognised that, and developed products like iOS which hide away all the complexity for the average user. That's obviously extremely profitable, as opposed to asking people to read and understand a 50 page booklet before they can effectively use their computer. They would rather pay money AND hand over their personal data in order to avoid the effort. 

[Linux]

I started with Mint, then tested Nobara, elementaryOS and settled with Pop!OS, since it has the best Nvidia implementation of all distros. Almost all of my daily activities have already been ported from Windows 11, so Linux-only will be the goal for 2023. I am still juggling with the desktop environment. Both GNOME and KDE have their pros and cons.

[Reciever]

I guess I may try Pop! again, last time I did it was with modded laptops and it didnt like the touchpad I had installed at all (still doesnt)

[Eban]

7 hours ago, Reciever said:

... it didnt like the touchpad I had installed at all (still doesnt)

 

I think it was ZorinOS 16.1  base, I tried on my Panasonic Toughbook cf-31 but nothing I could do to make it recognize the touchpad. Nothing in Zorin's forums or Ubuntu help pages would make it go....I finally gave up and installed windows 7