Since all of the “Linux is easy” folk are here I’ll ask a question even though I’m not near my PC:
I’m dual booting W11 and ZorinOS, I have 3 drives and only the OS drive mounts at boot. The other 2, games SSD and a storage HDD, have to mounted manually. An online search yielded that this was “expected behaviour” and “how it’s designed to work” but unfortunately it confuses Steam each time I boot because as far as Steam is concerned the drive ceases to exist.
Has anyone else had the same issue? I think I could use crontab to mount the drives at boot but it seems like something that shouldn’t be happening at all.
I had to figure this out the hard way because everywhere I asked the question I’d get told how I was wrong and it’s good actually. So good luck finding anything helpful for your specific install. I will share with you some links that kinda got me there. I had to figure out most of the steps individually and piece them together from multiple sources.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eoq_cgAWMmQ
https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/auto-mounting-secondary-drives/970
I’m sure sure how relevant those links will be as I was trying to do the same on bazzite and not zorin but hopefully they help. If you are able to install gnome disks (if you haven’t already) there is a checkbox to do it for you but I forget where it is. I have a little document typed up on my PC at home that I can share with you as well when I get there later on the off chance that it is helpful. If you have questions, ask away I’m not sure I will be helpful but I’ll do what I can.
FYI, linux seems to hate NTFS partitions and that may be a contributing factor here.
Not sure what you searched for to get those answers, all I had to search was “Linux mount at boot” to get this answer with directions for editing /etc/fstab or using the gnome disk utility gui based on your preference
The hard part is knowing exactly what language to search to get the result you want.
Not sure, but I’ll give that a go this weekend when I have some time to play around with it. Many thanks!
this was the only confusing thing I found withWheb I started using Linux, but once I got my drive mounting at boot at startup.
I don’t have any problem with doing it anymore but why don’t beginner friendly distros have like a gui version or something easier to do that with for new users?
It’s absolutely bananas that internal drives are not mounted automatically by standard. It’s even more bananas that it’s not easily customizable via GUI. Gnomes partitioning app can somewhat do it I believe, in KDE’s partitioning app, it was completely broken last time I tried. Either way I lost two people back to Windows because of this
While I do agree with you on principle, keep in mind that while NTFS is technically supported in Linux there can still be issues. Reading is fine, but write can still be suspect. Someone a lot more experienced than I can correct this if I’m wrong, but it is not recommended to share a drive actively between Windows and Linux due to NTFS quirks.
I mount my Windows NTFS data disk as needed in CachyOS, and will build the NAS I keep putting off for active file sharing as I spend more time on the Linux partition.
Yeah NTFS is not a great experience indeed. You can only do so much without it being open source. But I also experienced issues with mounting ext4 or btrfs. It’s not a dealbreaker for me, but it tends to irritate new users while it seems easy to fix.
Yeah its not a perfect system, has some flaws, but its actual freedom from surveillance and late stage capitalism on the plus side.
Not bad for a free, modern desktop that looks stunning.
Absolutely! I’ve been on Linux since 2017 and KDE Plasma since 2019-ish. It outperforms Windows even in terms of usability/ease of use in most cases. My 70+ years old, tech-illiterate parents happily use it.
But things like mounting and partitioning make me scratch my head. KDEs partitioner requires sudo rights to even start and then formats partitions in a way that you need sudo rights to access it. It’s annoying and would be very easy to fix.
You can mount your drives on boot in fstab (/etc/fstab). This is only a low-key pain in the ass, and it’s probably a good thing your internally installed drives won’t change very often.
If whatever method you use to mount them outright requires using the full
mountcommand, possibly with a shitload of parameters attached, you can also do it on boot as a cron job that fires on boot (crontab -e) by prefacing the command with@rebootrather than the usual set of time parameters. This is how I handle e.g. mounting complicated network shares on my servers. This will fire before you even get to your login screen, so the drives ought to be accessible by the time Steam has to do whatever it does.
First last and only time I ever tried to get a microsloth account, they fucked up my password selection and basically locked me out of my system wherein resided my steam account, emulation, and music libraries and all of my non steam games. Never ever did that again
Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC is supported until 2032 and free to activate.
LTSC is pretty much what Windows should be. And MS hates people are using it so it means it’s the best choice.
And what does that accomplish? Delaying the actual problem to 2032?
It gives you 6 years to transition to a better OS. Or to become CEO of Microslop and improve things.
It’s honestly great, even for me who only boot into windows once every few months.
I wouldn’t say “great”. But great in comparison to 11 😁 But who needs 6 years of transition? The run-of-the-mill-user with office and Firefox could just switch and not even notice it. Despite libreoffice loading much quicker.
But who needs 6 years of transition?
I’m hoping someone manages to make surface pro’s fully compatible with linux in that time… (or that something that’s compatible and serves SPs purpose becomes available)
Great in the sense I don’t have to bother for 6 years for a partition I will use less than 24 hours over that period of time haha.
So far I’ve used it to scan once (for some reason that day skan decided to not work) and to make a windows install USB for my SO.
I tried Expedition 33 thinking performance issues were a Linux thing by no, it’s just like that.
So it’s a long term unlikely to be used OS, and for that long support is great.
True true. Can’t hurt to have. I went through great hassles to set up Linux besides my old win install and also made a VM out of it for those “I don’t wanna boot again”-moments.
Turns out, I never actually needed either. And I was surely deep into win and half of my tools were self made and now obsolete. Everything just works and works better, more comfy and even faster.
Actually, one more use case is my SO. Can’t/won’t use Linux, and I’m not fighting. But needs an up to date OS on the ancient lappet laptop, so 10 IOT it is.
It gives us 6 years to grow the Linux user base so that software devs, game devs, etc. make their products with Linux specifically in mind instead of creating poor ports or excluding the OS entirely.
Linux adoption is only going up.
I play heavily modded games and it’s a hassle to make some of them work in Linux. Ltsc helps me give some time until modding in Linux gets better support.
It delays the problem for six more years, and it also gives me the satisfaction of
piratingtesting the only decent version of Windows free of Microslop bloat and vibe coded react.Exactly. It just delays the inevitable (maybe even sooner if something denies to run on “this old unsupported version”). As an old win-lover I never thought I’d say this:
Better switch to Linux, most of everything windows still works, everything else is just better and faster.
the only decent version of Windows
Please stop romanticising Win 10 just because it’s less shitty than 11. There is no decent Windows.
Reminder: Win 10 introduced
- mandatory telemetry (you can only choose between some telemetry and firehose telemetry)
- a built-in keylooger
- built-in advertising
- agressive nag screens containing dark patterns trying to trick users into “upgrading”
The last good Windows was Windows 98
For people with a BSOD fetish? Definitely!
Don’t yuck my yum
I’m not. It’s just… why can’t you play with penguins like the other boys?
Reminder that they backported the Windows 10 telemetry to Windows 7 as well.
Yup. That’s what made me ditch Win 7 long before EOL and switch to Linux. Been here for ten years now. Life’s good. 🌱
Gives 6 more years for Adobe and my online games to start supporting Linux D: (or the Adobe alternatives to become more suitable for professional use)
I can’t help you with the games. You could vote with your wallet and just not play those specific ones. Start hitting that backlog of games you got on sale and never opened.
Regarding Adobe suite in a professional manner, I’m pretty sure they work on MacOS.
You always have choices. They may not be perfect but they do exist nonetheless. These companies will never stop being invasive if users keep giving in. Until “number go down” in board meetings, nothing changes.
You could vote with your wallet and just not play those specific ones.
Oh I’m not paying for them, but still one of my main daily drivers is Genshin, and I haven’t found such an enjoyable open world exploration in any other game I’ve tried. (I’m PC-only so haven’t tried Breath of the Wild.)
Regarding Adobe suite in a professional manner, I’m pretty sure they work on MacOS.
I would never touch a Mac, it’s way more of a walled garden than Windows.
Also I was talking about Adobe alternatives like Inkscape for Illustrator or Scribus for InDesign. From what I’ve read they are really not there yet. (Tried Inkscape a few times, but the UI is so unintuitive for my brain used to Adobe’s UI/workflow 😭)
Not played genshin yet, but you might like where winds meet? Incredibly beautiful, good combat, exploring is rewarding. And totally free. And runs wonderfully on Linux, even with HDR.
Dunno about current adobes, but don’t they also run fine via wine? Have only one single tool so far that makes a bit trouble (mediamonkey).
Thanks, I’ll check out Where Winds Meet! :)
Dunno about current adobes, but don’t they also run fine via wine? Have only one single tool so far that makes a bit trouble (mediamonkey).
From the reports I see on WineHQ, they are all various levels of broken, though the last versions tested were from 2024.
Honestly I recently only used some portable warezed one. CC6 or 2024 or whatever they call their shit now. I lost interest when they switched to that cloud-nonsense. Which is sad because I was there when they introduced Photoshop and i loved it. Newer than 2024 will probably just be worse. I’d bet they put a lot of effort in their DRM which naturally breaks things
Genshin is playable on Linux? I play it on my Steam Deck.
Thanks, that’s good to know! From what I’ve read a few months ago when I last looked into it, it only worked with a fan-made launcher that posed a ban risk and also broke every few updates.
I just add the official launcher as a non-steam game and ran through the install as normal.
Granted I haven’t done it in a couple of months, so not sure if that method still works…but I don’t see why not
Oh I’m not paying for them, but still one of my main daily drivers is Genshin, and I haven’t found such an enjoyable open world exploration in any other game I’ve tried.
Genshin Impact works on Linux: https://lutris.net/games/genshin-impact/
(I’m PC-only so haven’t tried Breath of the Wild.)
I’m Linux only and I’ve played Breath of the Wilds (works on Windows too).
Go to your favorite torrent site (1337x to) and search for Breath of the Wild. It’ll be packaged with the emulator so you don’t need to do anything. It’s a better experience, higher framerate, antialiasing, 4k upscaling and reverse tonemapping (Windows calls this autoHDR) (and basically anything that you can do with ReShade)
Also I was talking about Adobe alternatives like Inkscape for Illustrator or Scribus for InDesign. From what I’ve read they are really not there yet. (Tried Inkscape a few times, but the UI is so unintuitive for my brain used to Adobe’s UI/workflow 😭)
A few months ago someone made a patch which makes the Adobe CC 2021 and 2025 installer work in Wine.
Come on in, the Linux water is fine :)
I always thought of Macs as not a good value before, but nowadays for laptops at least they seem to be relatively good.
I still find them annoyingly unintuitive, but that’s probably due to lack of experience. At least they come with some (old) version of bash and support standard stuff like ssh out of the box from my understanding.
Was it a hoax that Microsoft came after Massgrave?
I’m sure the fact that the Steam Hardware Survey just hit 5.33% Linux has absolutely NOTHING to do with Microsoft’s continued pants-on-head stupid and anti-consumer approach to things.
If by “complicates… basic PC ownership” they mean “infringes on your property rights as a computer owner,” then they’re finally catching on to what I’ve been saying for damn near a decade.
You should not accept having an abusive relationship with your operating system, and that’s what Windows has been since at least 8 (when they started infecting it with “telemetry”), if not earlier. Have some goddamn self-respect, people! Kick Microsoft to the curb!
Also win8: Hey, would you like NOT having a desktop? We’ve got tiles now!
Google onboarding on Android…
The key difference is that there are credible alternatives in the PC OS space. If I could ditch Android/iOS without major pain, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
Root and use custom roms.
alas, most models of android phones don’t have support from the custom roms that currently exist
If, the roms exist, there’s clearly hardware for them…
And what should you suggest we should do with the ones that don’t? Bury them all at some landfill?
Well, they were born e-waste, so yea. If the consumer is in middle of the lake of information, but refuses to drink anything but bottled corpo propaganda and dies from dehydration…
Only works if your device has an unlockable bootloader, and most phones nowadays are completely locked down.
Most but not all. If someone cares THAT much about making a free account and telemetry, a few minutes on XDA won’t hurt their schedule.
That’s the direction that many manufacturers are trying to push PCs as well.
and it can be skipped. for now.
Setup = download Linux iso > flash memory device > boot > install.
Where do the complications come in?
Where do the complications come in?
When drive doesn’t automount and you have to manually edit fstab file
The complication comes from when I need to use proprietary windows-only software for whatever professional or recreative reasons.
Free (as in freedom) software is great for 90% of situations, but there are things free software just can not do.
Wine exists but it’s mostly focused on video-games, and honestly, it’s such a pain to get a windows program to run on wine that I prefer to just have a second SSD with Faildos and boot from it when I eventually need to use such programs. Which I make sure to unplug the ethernet cable when I do.
I just vm’d my entire win 7 machine with no nic.
Unfortunately VMs aren’t a solution for my use case since I need no latency realtime audio or GPU acceleration
Running windows in a VM is still… running Windows. It’s not idealistically different to having a dedicated Windows computer. There’s nothing magical about running Linux as a host that makes Windows less evil.
Bottles has made wine a lot better. Also, I keep a Windows in a VM, isolated where it belongs.
When does that come up recreationally?
If I can’t do something I don’t do it.
Do you have a few minutes to talk about our Lord and Saviour, Linus Torvalds?
a few years ago I had a really stupid issue with my laptop. about twice a year, for whatever reason, Windows 11 decided my internal wifi card wasn’t worth existing and would just wipe it off the face of the earth. Just completely remove it, delete the drivers, everything. hard resetting the laptop didn’t work, physically unplugging and replugging the card back in didn’t work, manually installing the drivers didn’t work. the ONLY way Windows would accept the card again was on a fresh OS install. So twice a year, like clockwork, i’d have to do that except the last time I couldn’t because I needed an MS account. well I couldn’t get online. for whatever reason it wouldn’t allow me to connect to wifi and I didn’t have access to an eithernet connection. So I gave up and finally decided to give this Linux thing a try. Installed Mint within 15min.
The added bonus of installing Linux on the laptop was it suddenly brought my battery back to life. on Windows I MAYBE got 30min out of a full charge. On Linux with a WM like Niri it’s now a few hours. Linux also made me fall in love with the PC again. Now I’m on NixOS and i just love configuring my system or doing more dev work with ease thanks to nixshells.
Linux also made me love computing again!! So fun actually knowing your machine and being totally free to break it completely.
The best thing about breaking it is having a chance to set it up again more efficiently
Praise be!
I always have time to talk about The Admin. Should I make some
teacoffee to sip as we talk?Milk and sugar please.
Ha, “The Admin” brought to mind something I haven’t thought about in years…
Ohh…
I need to find these books.
Thank you.
Only if you have a few minuets to talk about our Lord and Savoir Theo de Raadt
I ran into my first people doing that for Jesus in many years last weekend. Was so bizarre. They just approached me randomly on the street.
Filthy heretics!
No, im sorry I dont have time for that, but have you heard of Linus Torvalds?
Microsoft doing their part to get people to move to Linux
More “Microsoft doing their part to get peoppe used to the idea of having to login with an internet connection so that they can makes Windows 12 subscription based.”
Thats what this bullshit is. Training the user base for OSaaS.
And they will have enterprise by the balls because they control like 90% of the enterprise market. The consumers, they could give a fuck if they take it or leave it. Windows licensing is such an teeny tiny part of the equation that screaming at them is going to get as much traction as screaming at Nvidia for the fact that a midrange GPU is 1000 bucks now. Nvidia doesnt care if their consumer gpu market disappears tomorrow, they’ve got the AI fucks locked in.
Wow. This is absolutely has to be the reason. There is nothing better than a recurrent revenue stream. Look at Spotify, Netflix business model.
Really. And even better, now they can granularize Windows even further. Windows 11 Home or Pro? Naw fam, that’s not enough. You’ll have the baseline Windows 12 sub for $10 per month…seems reasonable, right? Except that’s the baseline. That’s the version that can only make use of, at maximum, 4 CPU cores. Want to use all the cores in your bomb ass new processor? You need to bump up to the $20 per month subscription which includes the CPU-MAX add on. Not a fan of the basic Windows wallpaper? Well, fret not! You just need to download the Personalization add-on for an additional $5 per month and now you can change your wallpaper. Hey, is that a new GPU you got there? Yeah, you’re going to need to spring for the Gamer bundle…$20 a month for that, on top of the base sub. Oh and don’t forget about your local storage…they can subscription lock that, too. “You don’t even need local storage anyway! Just use OneDrive!!! It’s only a few bucks extra per month!!”…deliberately priced far less than the local storage subscription so that they can scrape all your shit for marketable data which you’ll see in the fine print of the ToS they’re allowed to do with abandon.
Go to turn on HDR…“sorry, you need the graphics booster add on”. Try to output 5.1 audio? “Sorry, no can do, you get 2.0 only, peasant, you didn’t sign up for the media add-on.” Want to throw another stick of memory in your rig to extend it’s life? “Sorry, base Windows can only use 16GBs…you need the performance package to address anything more.”
And you know what the best part is? This shit would all likely be legal. Know how I know? Because Windows enterprise server and software licensing is already like this, and has been for years.
Shit is so fucked man…
Heated seats in luxury cars.
Chris Titus’ windows utility will decrapify Windows quite a bit, including removing telemetry, copilot and much more stuff for those unable/unwilling to move to Linux.
For those a bit more adventurous he provides a Microwin install image creator that tweaks a standard ISO to be as light as possible, removing as much crap as possible during install, making install un atended, and creating a local account.
The only reason I don’t install Linux on my NVMe drive and leave it on my SSD is that I can’t reinstall Windows with a local account (though maybe there’s a painful workaround). If they break, they’re gone forever.
There’s an easy workaround : install W10 with a local account, then upgrade. No need for any kind of workaround. Disclaimer : this might have worked because I’m in Europe.
Otherwise, there are workarounds for a vanilla install with only local accounts that still works to this day, I did that in a VM. But that’s flimsy.
Of course, this leaves you to the whim of “fucking microsoft, we’ll screw you forever, bork your data when we want, force you to change computer every other year, and you’ll love it”, but the option exists.
Works.
I’m in Australia and this works. At least the last time i installed windows.
There will be always a workaround, because Windows NT was originally built with local accounts in mind and the whole system’s architecture is based on that. Even if they block every possible way to do that using their official installation media, someone will just create a custom disc image, some script or whatever that you will be able to use to have a local account.
Just an idea:
- Get an HDD
- Use
ddto clone your NVME Windows drive. - Install Linux on your NVME.
- Boot Windows from the HDD as you find you need it (which I suspect would be a lot less than you think).
- If you find you need to go back to Windows, just reclone onto the original drive.
I bet you’ll eventually reclaim the HDD, though. I kept mine for about two years, and I nuked it last week, because I hadn’t even opened it, much less booted it, in over a year.
You can also just assign the drive you just created to a vm via VFIO. No need to dual boot.
Sail the high seas. Also, you absolutely can still skip logging in and setup a local account.
Rufus can still bypass every single W11 requirement and automatically complete the setup for you, including a local account.
Chris Titus’s WinUtil. In it is a tool called MicroWin that can create a custom installation media which will allow local accounts and also remove all the telemetry, adverts and all the other crap.
In capitalist USA the computer own you… Or something like this?
Dear Micro$lop: Quit trying to make it happen
Today is a good day to try Linux.
(maybe best to start with Mint or Ubuntu? At least that’s how I did. They have a “live” version you can try out before committing to it)
Windows 10 kept throwing up full screen ads for whatever bullshit they were trying to get me to sign up for while also telling me my computer wasn’t good enough for Windows 11.
And that’s how I ended up with Mint on my desktop and laptop a couple months ago.
I have to use Windows for work, but my personal machines are Linux and macOS at this point, and I have zero intention of buying another windows license.
I also just replaced Windows 10 with Mint recently. I did sadly buy Windows 11 proper at some point for my new office PC, which thankfully has been okay after I turn off the copilot shit. And I’m stuck with it until a few programs get some Linux support.
But regardless, I sure won’t be buying anything more from Windows.
I’m not sure what your use cases and performance requirements are, but Windows works great in a VM.
I rarely use it, but I happened to fire it up today and after updating it I got a full screen ad to start backing up my computer to their shit.
Just moved my parents onto Mint, they were hesitant at first but now doing great. MS is digging it’s own grave.
“complicates” is the mildest, nicest perspective
they didn’t have room for “is entirely fucking unnecessary” in the headline
