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General discussionWindows users learning Linux(98 posts)(98 posts)
(98 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted September 16, 2021
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Darvond: This is the wrong approach. You shouldn't be doing anything involving partitioning in a production system. (That is to say, within it.)

Now while there are a lot of strange and arbitrary rules regarding partitioning, there shouldn't be any restrictions on restructuring if you approach them from "orbit", so to speak.

So you'd boot into a live USB, and manage the partitioning (VERY CAREFULLY) from there.
Messing with partitions and mountpoints after it's in place, i agree you probably shouldn't do without careful consideration. Although if say the SquashFS module is built into the kernel, you could compress directories and then delete them and have them automatically mounted as read-only partitions. It may actually be a hair faster using gzip or lzo compression.

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A few thoughts; I've been planning out how to do a Linux cluster-like group, where each computer adds it's resources, but i don't need to recompile the software to use MPI or something like that. (Nice idea but i doubt i want to modify a bunch of sources and recompile)

So one idea is most of the systems will have extra ram. To try and pool it to create a ramdrive for work. Maybe not the best idea as networking will become the bottleneck but i don't need hard drives for anything but the master, good for liveCD's cluster setup.

So... create a /tmp/cluster-ram/block file, and dump a file the size it can safely spare. (Say, all but 512Mb ram... at least for slaves. So say i have oh, 4 old laptops with 2Gb each, that would give an extra 7Gb /tmp filespace).

Second, map/mount all /tmp/cluster-ram directories via NFS, append them together using losetup and adm tools, format and mount as a public nfs and all slaves mount that directory via NFS.

Now for this to really make sense, on the master you'd extract files to the shared ramdrive drive and then give commands to the slaves to work on file(s) only within the shared ramdrive..

That's the basic idea, using xargs primarily for splitting work on lots of little files. Doesn't seem rsh/ssh would work the best in that instance since different machines may be faster/slower and better if they pick up jobs when they are free instead.
Posted September 16, 2021
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_Auster_: I think it depends on the person.
Windows to me feels more simplified/streamlined in the usual processes, but if the user wants more control over a process or wants to go deeper in the technical part, at least in my experience, Linux tends to be easier to learn and use. Also, if something breaks on Windows, at least I find it much harder to find a working solution, while the solutions for Linux tend to work, but are far more technical (so there's a bigger learning curve).
And I can't comment on the MacOS because the most recent version I've used so far is the Macintosh 68K.
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dtgreene: Actually, I think it may be easier to tell someone how to do certain tasks on Linux versus Windows.
* Windows: You need to tell the user which buttons and menu options to select, where they are, and all that sort of stuff. Worst case, a registry edit might be needed, and the registry can be tricky to navigate.
* Linux: Just give the user some commands to type, or in some cases, make an edit to a text file. Text files are much easier to deal with than the registry, and typing commands doesn't rely on having to find the command, if someone knows what to type (whereas knowing which menu option to choose isn't enough, as you still need to find that option).
Auster have a point. Technical areas in Windows feels way more complicated than in Linux kernel. At least it's my impression as a rookie here.
Having a background* knowledge about terminals and logic programming, using Linux is invigorating.
Post edited September 16, 2021 by .Keys
Posted October 10, 2021
Real quick report:

I've been using Linux Mint 20.2 XFCE, dual boot with Win10 for a while now and Im loving the system.
It's way faster and it really push the user to learn about the system overall. Really happy with it!
Everything I need to use, Linux does have. Im maintaining a Windows boot too just for some games that are exclusive and run better in Native Windows than on WINE.

Still, Im 90% of the time in Linux for day-to-day use, just when I want to play a specific game I need to boot windows 10. But the boot with GRUB is so fast that it doesn't bother me at all.

Thanks everyone once again for the answers and tips, I realy appreciate it and to my fellow Windows users that always wanted to test Linux, here's my "linux noob beginner tip":

I believe it's a good time for you to try and install a Linux Distro of your choice, as Windows will start to push updates to win10 and 'indirectly force' people to use Windows 11 with 'upgraded hardware'. Linux Mint is stable enough for a beginner to learn and, possibly, there are answers for most if not all first timers questions you might have.
Post edited October 10, 2021 by .Keys
Posted October 11, 2021
Recently trying out Ublax (Beta Slax but using Debain 9/10) i had boot issues with Grub, complaining the vesamenu.c32 issues. Still i got enough understanding of structure and file locations i could get it to boot by telling it to run the kernel and where the initramfs was. Then it's a matter of replacing said files that weren't working right (which worked fine on USB drive but not on the SD card oddly enough).

Also been editing the initramfs, so that experience is under my belt. Anyways, back to Slax 9.11, but if anyone has boot issues that needs a little workaround i might be able to help with that now, which before i'd have probably have just scrapped the OS.
Post edited October 11, 2021 by rtcvb32
Posted October 11, 2021
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.Keys: Hey, hope everyone is doing well.

Im trying to learn Linux and so far in this research of the FOSS scenario I learned many things that the Windows environment won't teach the common user.

GOG users tend to value freedom (The basis of FOSS) in a way many places in the internet doesn't anymore, so I'd like to make some questions for users more experienced than me, which honest opinion I value in the 'Freedom' topic. So feel free to answer the way you think would help someone learning, whether it is me or any other future user reading through this.

• What Linux distro you use the most and why?

• If you use Linux alongside Windows or other OSs, do you use Virtual Boxes or Dual Boot? Why?

• What are the advantages and disadvantages of using two OSs in the same PC?

• What are the advantages and disadvantages of using ONLY Linux (any distro / comparison of distros, if you want to explain)?

• Does WINE really works well with Windows exclusive games?

• Is it true that Linux have compatibility issues with some hardware (GPU, specially)? What's your experience with this?

(edit - full WSL name) • Windows Subsystem for Linux 1 and 2, are they really usefull for learning Linux in a Windows environment? Do they really have compatibility issues with some more advanced Linux commands?

As I said before, feel free to answer and give your honest opinion.
Thank you for your time.
First of all, I would just like to say, modern games and freedom don't usually gel together pretty well. Free software means complying with the "4 essential freedoms"....and all modern games break pretty much all of them. Therefore they are not free software.


Answering your questions in order,
1. Currently on Artix Linux. I chose Artix because it does'nt rely on systemD.

2. I dont use other OSes.

3. I used to dualboot windows and gnu.

Advantages : Games/other apps generally run slightly better on Windows. In general, you get to play around and learn new stuff.
Disadvantages : For me, I will launch Windows, play my games there (this was before discovering WINE), and later on continue to use Windows rather than switching to gnu to continue my other tasks. In other words, laziness.

4. IMO,
Advantages :
1. you will eventually get comfortable with the command line
2. the OS does'nt spy on you. (this can depend on the distro tho)
3. number 2.
4. more control, ie do what you want philosophy

Disadvantages
1. less sugar coating.
2. need to learn stuff.

5. This used to not be the case before, but with recent contributions from Valve (the Proton project) and things like Vulkan and dxvk, WINE has come a loooooooong way and is frankly quite awesome. You can refer protondb.com to see how well games perform in Proton, and usually that means a direct correlation with WINE performance as well.

6. When it comes to nvidia, you will definitely have to install the proprietary nvidia drivers to get the most out of your graphics card. For this specific reason, I will always prioritize AMD over Nvidia, as their open source drivers are generally magnificent.

7. No experience with WSL, so cant help you there. sorry.
Posted October 11, 2021
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rtcvb32: Recently trying out Ublax (Beta Slax but using Debain 9/10) i had boot issues with Grub, complaining the vesamenu.c32 issues. Still i got enough understanding of structure and file locations i could get it to boot by telling it to run the kernel and where the initramfs was. Then it's a matter of replacing said files that weren't working right (which worked fine on USB drive but not on the SD card oddly enough).
Grub scares me. It's a hairy old program that does what it does most of the time, but when it breaks, you have to grok some black box stuff. That's why I've been considering ReFind instead of Grub.
Posted October 11, 2021
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.Keys: I've been using Linux Mint 20.2 XFCE, dual boot with Win10 for a while now and Im loving the system.
It's way faster and it really push the user to learn about the system overall. Really happy with it!
Everything I need to use, Linux does have. Im maintaining a Windows boot too just for some games
Glad for you.) I think, more and more people will move to Linux in the upcoming years.
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n0rfleet: Free software means complying with the "4 essential freedoms"....and all modern games break pretty much all of them. Therefore they are not free software.
While free and open-source software is definitely good, many users choose Linux simply because it works better.

I don't mind running proprietary software, when I trust it's developer. For example, Vivaldi browser.
Posted October 11, 2021
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rtcvb32: Recently trying out Ublax (Beta Slax but using Debain 9/10) i had boot issues with Grub, complaining the vesamenu.c32 issues. Still i got enough understanding of structure and file locations i could get it to boot by telling it to run the kernel and where the initramfs was. Then it's a matter of replacing said files that weren't working right (which worked fine on USB drive but not on the SD card oddly enough).
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Darvond: Grub scares me. It's a hairy old program that does what it does most of the time, but when it breaks, you have to grok some black box stuff. That's why I've been considering ReFind instead of Grub.
Ditto. Though it seems from the looks of things, by the time it barfs it's already running a 32bit mini-os (those c32 modules are WAY too big for real mode) in order to show the graphics and choose your options before booting the kernel.

Or is that syslinux i'm referring to? I'm not sure. It's hard to tell which ones in use it feels like. I know you gotta get the first initial reads from the first sector to prep the rest of it.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionWindows users learning Linux(98 posts)(98 posts)
(98 posts)