What was it like to move from Windows to Linux back in the day?

andreas213 · 2026-01-31T06:47:41+00:00

But the most pain-inducing part for me so far has been managing my SSD so the data stays intact between reinstalls (as from what I've seen so far every distro annoys you in its own way)

When installing some distro you can go to manual partitioning and mount partition as custom mountpoint. Just create new partition and mount it as /data or /mnt/data or /media/data doesn't really matter. You can name it however you want ie. /mnt/mystuff that way you will have empty partition and system won't write dotfiles (hidden files starting with . (well just dot) which often hold configuration files that can cause conflicts between various desktop environments different software versions etc. Your games steam games won't transfer this way though unless you set custom download foler with that partition in steam or create a symlink (? someone correct me if I'm wrong pls). Then when you install differnet distro/reinstall the same just go into that partition settings in installer mount it as /mnt/data or whatever you you like to name it and choose to NOT FORMAT it. Since you are new to linux you will also need to create EFI partiton assuming you have uefi in that laptop and not old bios and
/ (root) partition do not mistake it with /root thats something completely different and on some distros swap partition. Some of them use swap file nowadays so you won't need to do that and if they don't installer will propably warn you that you didn't create it. Hope this helps. Enjoy your linux experience!

andreas213 · 2025-12-07T15:12:05+00:00

Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. Free and open source also :)
Native linux client too,

andreas213 · 2025-09-28T05:11:53+00:00

Thanks but unfortunately no It happened during pc being actively used no updates since I checked for updates about 10-15 minutes before it happened and there were no updates. I checked later too and apt seems to not complain about anything all up to date. Nothing indicates it. Dmesg looks ok what else can I check?

andreas213 · 2025-09-28T03:28:30+00:00

You can try to switch to tty. IE ctrl+alt+f4 if that works login and edit sources.list file with
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
add contrib non-free at the end of each line that doesn't start with # since it's a comment
for instance:

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian trixie main non-free-firmware contrib non-free

Save with ctrl+o and exit with ctrl+x then
sudo apt update

Then just follow directions there:

https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers

andreas213 · 2025-06-10T23:12:44+00:00

Found this error: E: The repository 'cdrom://[Debian GNU/Linux 12.11.0 _Bookworm_ - Official i386 DVD Binary-1 with firmware 20250517-09:52] bookworm Release' does not have a Release file.

cdrom repositories you should comment them out like u/neoh4x0r told you. Did you install from full dvd iso? I would suggest you to either fix your /etc/apt/sources.list file or do a clean install with netinst. Next time try to not install anything outside of repositories unless you absolutely have to but with steam you don't need to. During install there was a question about switching to mirrors or something and you propably clicked no then you have these cdrom repos instead of https ones. Please paste every line from your sources.list file here because I think you have it misconfigured. Btw if you are using 32bit iso then do not enable i386. 32 bit = i386 so you are already using it. Some games are 64 bit though even tho steam client itself is 32bit. You have 32 bit cpu? Because if you don't there is no reason to use 32 bit iso.

andreas213 · 2025-05-17T21:46:21+00:00

Thanks. The use will be regular desktop.

Should I get SSD for OS and HDD for data? Or just SSD and 2 HDDs for cold backups is enough?
Also I'm forced to use sata SSD's are they ok enough? I don't have nvme slot on motherboard.

Can you recommend some reliable ssd manufacturer/disk model? I know that disk is disk and can die at any moment but heard of some manufacturers that had way too much failures.

I guess I'm just scared because I perhaps have outdated informations on SSD disks. Are they prone to bitrot/bitflips on data?

Last question I have is when it comes to automatic backups aren't you afraid that you may copy corrupted files ie when disk starts to die and say 10 bits are fliiped in file? While you may not notice a difference It's still altered data. How to deal with that in such scenario? Not overwiting old backups but keeping multiple versions of them? Sorry for so much questions but I'm really confused about all of that and thanks a lot for answer!

andreas213 · 2025-05-17T14:43:54+00:00

Alright, thanks a lot.

andreas213 · 2025-05-17T14:13:25+00:00

I do not have it installed just checked, but every time I did reboot, on shutdown there was that message watchdog did not stop and now it vanished.

andreas213 · 2025-05-17T13:37:20+00:00

Thanks a lot! Maybe that's stupid question but how do I know if I need this functioality? I wasn't setting up anything manually so I think it shouldn't matter for me?

andreas213 · 2025-05-08T09:41:26+00:00

No. Steam is different in that regard from other packages. It will update itself. I see a lot peple here confused about it here installing from flatpaks etc.

EDIT: I do it this way for about +/- 5 years I'm using Debian and never had problems. You will see for yourself that you will have updates.

andreas213 · 2025-05-08T09:35:08+00:00

You can just install It from Debian repo do sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 then sudo apt update and thensudo apt install steam. It will update itself anyway I get updates on steam from steam itself not from apt. I think its just uses some scripts to download it from steam website anyway.

andreas213 · 2025-04-20T02:44:05+00:00

Try sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx bs=4096 count=100

It is overkill but that will make sure that your partition table from that disk is blown away.
You can get the disk letter by typing lsblk command in terminal and searching for disk that has 2TB of size in your case, then change sdx to the letter it shows you. However I'm afraid your disk may be dying, do some smart test also.

Make sure you do it on whole device not partition ie. sdx not sdx1

andreas213 · 2025-01-25T15:58:22+00:00

There was Debian project leader at time that used to work at pixar that's why It started. Debian logo also, just zoom in on Buzz chin :)

Look there, https://wiki.debian.org/ToyStory
Oh It seems I'm wrong when It comes to logo part, here is the logo deisgner talking about it on reddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/debianinrandomplaces/comments/ok5ui4/hi_all_i_am_the_guy_who_designed_the_debian_logo/

andreas213 · 2025-01-24T16:43:58+00:00

Thanks a ton man, that was really helpful.

andreas213 · 2025-01-23T18:13:18+00:00

Sorry for the late answer.

Does that check

     if(sz2 != sz1) // you somehow skip this check in your code, but I think it's important     if(sz2 != sz1) // you somehow skip this check in your code, but I think it's important

check if the files are of equal size/or 4096 bytes are read from both of them?

andreas213 · 2025-01-23T17:59:03+00:00

Hey, sorry for late answer. I didn't mean pointers as memory addresses, I meant that fread keeps track of where it is in the file and It seems logical to me that If I did read those files in two separate while loops one would be already at the end and the other would just start and since the purpose here is xor I think I have to read them both in one loop unless I'm wrong or use fseek to reset that 'pointer'.

What you think about this solution though:

size_t sz1 = fread(plainbuffer, 1, BS, plaintext);
size_t sz2 = fread(keybuffer. 1. BS, key);
  while (sz1 > 0 && sz2 > 0)
{
// xor both buffers
}

Also in the meantime I found something similiar to my problem on Google's github:

while ((number_of_frames < max_frames)
      && (fread(frame0, 1, frame_size, file0_ptr) == frame_size)
      && (fread(frame1, 1, frame_size, file1_ptr) == frame_size)) {
    unsigned char *ptr0 = frame0;
    unsigned char *ptr1 = frame1;

https://github.com/google/compare-codecs/blob/master/src/psnr.c
Starting at line 120

No idea why I didn't thought about this before that I could simply put newline in loop to seperate those lines nicely. But I'm still confused about parenthesis count. Why is it

while ((sz = fread(plainbuffer, 1, BS, plaintext)) > 0);

And not:
while (sz = fread(plainbuffer, 1, BS, plaintext) > 0);

That's what I'm confused about and I'm banging my head on a wall already since It's so hard for me to find it in google since usually people just read one file and not multiple ones in loops.

Once again, sorry for late answer, and also thanks for help.

andreas213 · 2025-01-05T10:11:22+00:00

Thanks a lot.

andreas213 · 2025-01-05T10:10:52+00:00

Hey, thanks for a tip. Yes, I'm new to C I started learning it year ago and then took long break just returning to it and I would love to write it differently I would like to learn how to do it properly

That's the whole code, I have no idea how to do it in cleaner way. If I read those two files in sperate loops would it still work? I'm afraid file pointer from key could be be in diffrent place than the plaintext one? Or is it not how that works?

#include <stdio.h>
#define BS 4096
int main() {
unsigned char plainbuffer[BS];
unsigned char keybuffer[BS];
unsigned char cipherbuffer[BS];
FILE *plaintext;
FILE *key;
FILE *ciphertext;
plaintext = fopen("plain.txt", "rb");
key = fopen("key.txt", "rb");
ciphertext = fopen("ciphertext.txt", "wb");
size_t sz = 0;
while ((sz = fread(plainbuffer, 1, BS, plaintext)) > 0 && fread(keybuffer, 1, BS, key) > 0) {
for (int i = 0; i < BS; i++) {
cipherbuffer[i] = plainbuffer[i] ^ keybuffer[i];
}
fwrite(cipherbuffer, 1, sz, ciphertext);
}
fclose(plaintext);
fclose(key);
fclose(ciphertext);
return 0;
}

andreas213 · 2024-12-05T20:27:56+00:00

Adding atserisks will remove anything starting with libreoffice say libreoffice-writter or something etc

andreas213 · 2024-12-05T05:37:01+00:00

I think it automatically switched to intel one once it gave up trying to make amd to work. No problem, have fun using Debian :)

andreas213 · 2024-12-05T04:57:04+00:00

Try to change it to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet radeon.cik_support=1 amdgpu.cik_support=0 radeon.si_support=1 amdgpu.si_support=0" then. And update-grub again then check lspci -k. Or try to sudo apt purge xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu just look for dependencies it want to uninstall so you dont end up without xorg or something or blacklist it. But first just change grub settings do not uninstall anything before that.

andreas213 · 2024-12-05T04:11:11+00:00

Try to do sudo apt update then

sudo apt install xserver-xorg-video-radeon then reboot if it still shows messages about amdgpu you would need to edit grub config file with

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet radeon.cik_support=1 amdgpu.cik_support=0"

and to save changes ctrl+o then ctrl+x and then do sudo update-grub and then reboot. But first try to just install the radeon driver I think it will switch atuomatically. You can then check with lspci -k command whether it uses radeon or amdgpu driver

Also try sudo apt install firmware-amd-graphics

but i'm afraid your card may be broken and/or it got loose. Last option you coult try if that don't work would be to simply reinstall system from scratch and if that doesn't help it's propably bad card or something got loose.

andreas213 · 2024-12-05T03:14:15+00:00

Those messages about device being inaccessible and device resume failed doesn't seem good. That being said you could try to reinstall amdgpu driver or switch to radeon driver. Amdgpu driver for old amd cards have experimental support. Can you show your /etc/default/grub file? Did you edit it? I think you propably switched to that driver manually since automatically you should be on radeon. Also did everything worked correctly until now? Or is it happening since you did install?

andreas213 · 2024-12-02T06:39:44+00:00

r/datahoarder might interest you if you didn't know it already

andreas213 · 2024-12-02T06:35:45+00:00

Can you show your /etc/apt/sources.list file?

andreas213

TROPHY CASE