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  3. Looking to change to a Linux-based OS on a laptop, but I don't really understand coding so I haven't tried any of them. Is LinuxMint a good place to start?

Looking to change to a Linux-based OS on a laptop, but I don't really understand coding so I haven't tried any of them. Is LinuxMint a good place to start?

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  • B [email protected]

    What do you use the laptop for?

    That's a huge factor.

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    wrote last edited by
    #67

    Right now that laptop is just being used to download stuff and on occasion I connect it to my TV to play a video, but it's really not often I do that. I'd still download stuff and then play around with basic everyday stuff on it to make sure I'm happy with it since that's mostly what I do on my main.

    End game would be to switch my main to Linux if I like it. Beyond basic, everyday stuff that most people do, I edit videos on my main. That's about it.

    B 1 Reply Last reply
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    • farraigeplaisteach@lemmy.worldF [email protected]

      I would say Ubuntu, Mint or Debian. They have a lot of documentation online and years worth of forum posts and stack overflow threads answering various questions a user might have.

      If you have a seperate computer or hard drive to install on, you can go wild trying out anything you like. In my case, I had one laptop so I needed something stable with good hardware detection and online resources.

      (For context, I've tried Mandrake Linux, SUSE, Gentoo, Slitaz and a few others. I keep going back to Ubuntu / Debian.)

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      wrote last edited by
      #68

      My Windows 8 laptop is an old one that I just use to download stuff. My main is a separate device, so all good there!

      1 Reply Last reply
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      • R [email protected]

        First and foremost, you don't have to stay on the distro you start with. You can try a few, spend a week running it, and then reinstall with something else. Distro hopping is the process if changing distro frequently and is in my opinion a very useful start for learning Linux.

        Second, Ubuntu is a perfectly fine distro. I don't like or use it, but I also don't really like chocolate but love licorice, it really is a matter of preference. If you never try it you will never know if it is good for you.

        I think the best path would be to either use virtual machines on your main system or try a few distros out on your Windows 8 machine. I would recommend trying a few of the most popular distros including Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, EndeavourOS, elementary, and maybe Pop!OS. That should cover most of the different desktop environments, packaging systems, and overall design methodologies and give you a really rounded sense of what is out there. It should also give you opportunities to have things break a little and for you to try to solve those problems. I find that different distros present failures a little differently and their solutions also work differently, so finding one that works well for you is key.

        I personally ended up switching from a vanilla Arch install to EndeavourOS a year or two ago because it had great sane defaults, good packaging, and fantastic performance. The clarity of the logs was better in my mind than what was available in Ubuntu based distros and while I love Arch it was a bit too demanding of my time to figure out each and every choice of package. EndeavourOS gave me good solid defaults and reduced my work load.

        Just remember, your choice of distro is like your choice of underwear. You have to wear it, make it comfortable for you and your junk, not for someone else's.

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        wrote last edited by
        #69

        The sound of virtual machines on my main doesn't sit well with me. If I do something and brick my main laptop I'm fucked and I can't replace it and some of the programs I use won't run at all/run well on my old Windows 8 machine because it doesn't have the processing power. (I got a gaming laptop so I could have the video processing I needed for video editors to not take a day to render a 15min video on Windows 10, never mind and older Windows 8 laptop. sigh) Experimentation and tech FAFO'ing will happen on the Windows 8! lol

        I've seen Pop!OS come up in a few comments here, so if I don't end up liking Mint maybe I'll try that one out next. 🙂

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        • O [email protected]

          Mint is a good option, yeah. Should feel familiar if you're coming from windows.

          Note that coding experience isn't really relevant. Only the most advanced users ever really need to write code for their system. 99% of linux users, including the experienced and power users, don't have to regularly code, per se. Note that I'm referring to actually writing programs, not terminal use. Using a terminal isn't coding but that may be what you were thinking of, it's similar but imo not the same. If you wanna do more advances stuff, you'll definitely want to learn the terminal, but for most stuff you'll get by just fine with GUIs like you're probably used to. Mint is particularly good at keeping stuff to GUIs.

          Something to note: coming from windows, you'll be used to getting programs by finding downloads on the internet. On linux, that's generally best avoided - you should always look on your distro's package manager first. On mint is believe it's called something like "software center" or "software manager," can't remember off the top of my head but it will be preinstalled for you.

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          wrote last edited by
          #70

          Why would it be an issue to download a program if it's not for Windows or Mac? So long as there's a Linux-based option that works with your version, that is. There is one program I use multiple times a week that I doubt would be on any basic install package and the only place to find it is online. (Not an issue for the computer I'll be trying it out on as it's not my main, but if I find a version of Linux I like a put it on my main then it's something I'd have to consider.)

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          • P [email protected]

            Right now that laptop is just being used to download stuff and on occasion I connect it to my TV to play a video, but it's really not often I do that. I'd still download stuff and then play around with basic everyday stuff on it to make sure I'm happy with it since that's mostly what I do on my main.

            End game would be to switch my main to Linux if I like it. Beyond basic, everyday stuff that most people do, I edit videos on my main. That's about it.

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            wrote last edited by [email protected]
            #71

            Right now that laptop is just being used to download stuff

            What do you mean by download "stuff"? Like games? Books? Torrents? This is Lemmy, there is no need to hide 😛

            For external video, specifically, I'd avoid any distro that's too 'old' and use a popular DE (KDE, LXQt, maybe Cosmic?) so that it works seamlessly, especially if the laptop's output is hardwired to the internal graphics. Weird distros, or ones that use old stuff, may not 'just work'

            Mint, for instance, is suggested a lot, and it would probably be fine, but I wouldn't be surprised if some graphics related thing doesn't work because something's too old.

            And if you're gaming (for example), that's a whole different set of recommendations.

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            • libb@piefed.socialL [email protected]

              The only coding I ever did was like, some very light HTML on stuff like LiveJournal 20 years ago (because I'm ancient in internet years, haha) and even that I barely remember.

              Hi,

              Fear not: I switched to Mint when I was already in my 50s... and before that I had been a lifelong Apple user (got my first Apple computer back in the early 80s).

              I tried a few distro before settling on Mint and the only reason I picked it up was because, back then at least, it was the only one that would let me use my... Airpods, seriously. Fast forward a few years, to this very day, and you can be assured I would not want to go back to Apple. And I still am using Mint, as I never had any issue with it, not a single one (beside me doing stupid things, but hey that's how one learns :p). It works perfectly well for me.

              Not saying that as way to push you to use Mint. I mean, like others have already suggested there are plenty excellent GNU/Linux available and Mint is just one of them, but to let you know there is no need to be an expert in order to use it.

              BTW, Mint is based upon Ubuntu (which is based upon Debian), the hate towards Ubuntu is because they force certain tools/choice onto their users which, unlike with Apple or Microsoft, is not something a lot of people in the Free Software world will agree with (I certainly don't, as that's the main reason I quit using Apple ;). Ubuntu is still an excellent distribution, just their policy doesn't sit well with the freedom & choice Linux is supposed to be promoting.

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              wrote last edited by
              #72

              I don't like how certain things are being forced onto us through almost every goddamn tech thing so yeah...I get that sentiment. Good to know that about Ubuntu.

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              • rapchee@lemmy.worldR [email protected]

                depending on how complicated it is to swap out the hard disk, i'd swap out the windows drive and put in a new one (preferably an ssd, they make a big difference even in older computers) - this way you'll keep the option to put it back if you're really lost, you can back up stuff there
                mint is a good place to start, no need for coding.
                you do need to get adjusted a bit, the complaints about "how difficult it is to do things on linux" is often because people try doing stuff exactly like they did on windows, and sure, you can do exactly the same thing but you need to set up, sometimes compile tools for it - or you can search in the software manager or search on the web for "xy linux alternative"
                for instance file sharing - yeah linux supports samba (the windows file sharing protocol), it works, but imo it kinda sucks (but tbf it sucked on windows too), so i started looking for alternatives and just allowing an ssh connection allows you to directly connect to machines with your username, and also allows sftp file transfers, and it works so much better

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                wrote last edited by
                #73

                I don't trust myself with swapping out hardware, but maybe one day that might be an option for me, lol.

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                • N [email protected]

                  Mint is a great distro for beginners. Coding is not required, but coders prefer Linux because it makes our lives easier in some ways.

                  I would like to take the opportunity to give you two advices that I think everyone who wants to use Linux should hear:

                  Install from package manager

                  In windows the way to install something is to look it up on a browser, open a sketchy website, downloading a binary and executing it on your machine. That is definitely NOT the way to do stuff on Linux. Think on Linux the same way you do Android (which is actually a Linux distro), if you want to install something you look it up on the play store, and only if it's not there you consider alternatives like downloading a random .APK from the internet. Linux should be the same, except there are several alternatives before downloading a binary from the internet, like adding a PPA in debian based distros (Mint is based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian, so this applies to you) which essentially gives extra packages to the package manager or using flatpak/snaps (two different technologies that try to do the same, i.e. a new way of packaging software for Linux)

                  Keep /home in a different partition

                  In Linux any folder can be in any hard-drive/partition. So it's possible when you're installing your system to have what you would normally think as C:\ (which is called / in Linux) in one partition and /home (i.e. the folder home inside /) in another. This is great because it allows you to reinstall or change your Linux distro without losing your personal data.

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                  wrote last edited by
                  #74

                  Ok, wait...I thought a partition meant that it was in effect a wall between different OSs if you had multiples on one computer, not like separate folders like in Windows Explorer (which is what I'm getting from this comment, if I'm wrong please let me know).

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                  • B [email protected]

                    Right now that laptop is just being used to download stuff

                    What do you mean by download "stuff"? Like games? Books? Torrents? This is Lemmy, there is no need to hide 😛

                    For external video, specifically, I'd avoid any distro that's too 'old' and use a popular DE (KDE, LXQt, maybe Cosmic?) so that it works seamlessly, especially if the laptop's output is hardwired to the internal graphics. Weird distros, or ones that use old stuff, may not 'just work'

                    Mint, for instance, is suggested a lot, and it would probably be fine, but I wouldn't be surprised if some graphics related thing doesn't work because something's too old.

                    And if you're gaming (for example), that's a whole different set of recommendations.

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                    wrote last edited by
                    #75

                    Oh, I didn't mean to be mysterious with shit, lol. Just basic torrents of TV shows and movies, haha. (Never went the streaming route, kept sailing the high seas.) I might download a book once in a while, but that's actually on my main.

                    I use VLC and Media Player Classic as my main video players on Windows, so VLC should be ok and if it isn't I'm sure I can find something else (I know MPC is Windows only).

                    I only do mobile games, not PC games, so not a concern for me there.

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                    • P [email protected]

                      Ok, I'm assuming that a 'live boot' is something you plug in anytime you want to use it rather than the installed OS that automatically boots? Yes?

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                      wrote last edited by
                      #76

                      Yes, exactly. You would choose your Linux distribution that has a “live boot” option, download the appropriate .iso file, and then make a bootable usb drive using that file, via software like Rufus. When that’s all complete, you would plug in the usb drive and reboot. (You may need to press a key or access your system’s BIOS settings to ensure your system boots from the usb as well - sometimes this is not automatic.)

                      The chosen OS will load directly from the USB and give you a chance to try it out. You may not have access to the data from your existing system in this mode, but you may not need that if you’re just kicking the tires.

                      This exercise also helps focus you more on what you actually need/want your system to be able to do. Most of my personal use is web browsing, media consumption, and basic documents and Linux is more than capable of delivering on all of that right out of the box.

                      If you get stuck on a step, there are probably hundreds of posts out there where someone had the same problem, so you should be able to find solutions to any problems that occur with some patience.

                      I have found the journey to be very freeing and rewarding, and hope you find the same.

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                      • P [email protected]

                        The sound of virtual machines on my main doesn't sit well with me. If I do something and brick my main laptop I'm fucked and I can't replace it and some of the programs I use won't run at all/run well on my old Windows 8 machine because it doesn't have the processing power. (I got a gaming laptop so I could have the video processing I needed for video editors to not take a day to render a 15min video on Windows 10, never mind and older Windows 8 laptop. sigh) Experimentation and tech FAFO'ing will happen on the Windows 8! lol

                        I've seen Pop!OS come up in a few comments here, so if I don't end up liking Mint maybe I'll try that one out next. 🙂

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                        wrote last edited by
                        #77

                        I would ask how many times you have bricked your Windows machines in the past? That said, if you did stop it from booting it would be the same as it not booting a native Linux install.

                        That said, I would recommend installing first on the older machine. New life for that machine will feel good and it is very low risk. Once you have done a few installs and not botched anything too badly you could give it a go on your new machine. I find the performance boost from using Linux over Window is enough to out weight significant hardware differences most of the time.

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                        • P [email protected]

                          The specs on the laptop meet the requirements for Mint according to their website so I assume that the hardware is compatible for it. But for stuff like my printer...somebody above mentioned that they were having issues with it working with Linux which isn't something I thought about.

                          Funnily enough, I did sit and wonder about the programs I use on my main laptop before right now, just not stuff like printers. My Office Suite is LibreOffice and as far as I'm aware that's Linux compatible since they're both in the open source world and the writing/author program I love has Linux options I just don't know if they'd work with Mint. (One is Debian and other comments were saying that Mint is based off Debian at it's core, so maybe that would work?)

                          ANYWAYS, without getting further in the weeds, I'll have to look into some things further in that regard. Thank you for bringing that up.

                          And this is probably a dumb follow-up question, but would my ISP be impacted by Linux then? Like, the router might not be compatible or something? The simple aspect of my printer being compatible didn't come to mind at first, so maybe that could be a thing, I dunno!

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                          wrote last edited by
                          #78

                          My Office Suite is LibreOffice and as far as I’m aware that’s Linux compatible

                          It is very much compatible, haha. And usually comes pre-installed as the desktop office suite in many distros like Ubuntu and Debian that ship the Gnome desktop environment pre-installed.

                          but would my ISP be impacted by Linux then?

                          It should not be impacted at all. 🙂

                          The simple aspect of my printer being compatible didn’t come to mind at first

                          If you install any popular beginner friendly distro (like the ones I recommended) everything should work out of the box and it is very unlikely that any extra drivers need to be installed. For example on Archlinux no printing programs/services and drivers come pre-installed or enabled.

                          So do not worry at all, if your laptop cover the main requirements, the distro should handle the rest automagically. If you have any more questions you can talk to me directly here on Lemmy, or we can figure something out.

                          One thing though, Mint is based on Ubuntu which itself is based on Debian. But it doesn't really matter.

                          Since you are going to check what software you need/want for your new Linux device, you can always fill the gaps with Flatpaks on Flathub, these are meant to be universal packages for every Linux distro and usually you can find there the packages that your distro does not package natively. You can even find proprietary software like Discord and such.

                          And again, if you have any more questions be sure reply or send me a message directly her eon Lemmy.

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                          • R [email protected]

                            I would ask how many times you have bricked your Windows machines in the past? That said, if you did stop it from booting it would be the same as it not booting a native Linux install.

                            That said, I would recommend installing first on the older machine. New life for that machine will feel good and it is very low risk. Once you have done a few installs and not botched anything too badly you could give it a go on your new machine. I find the performance boost from using Linux over Window is enough to out weight significant hardware differences most of the time.

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                            wrote last edited by
                            #79

                            A Windows computer I had got massively fucked once like, 15ish years ago. No idea what happened. No new downloads or installs, I hadn't done anything different from any computer I've had before or since, just one day it stopped and it wasn't even that old, two years tops. Not a custom build, straight outta the box from Best Buy (maybe even Future Shop it was so long ago). My friend couldn't tell me what happened when they figured out how to get it at least booting up again. Only time it's happened. It was weeeeeeeiiiiird.

                            Glad to know about the performance boost. 🙂

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                            • alecsargent@lemmy.zipA [email protected]

                              My Office Suite is LibreOffice and as far as I’m aware that’s Linux compatible

                              It is very much compatible, haha. And usually comes pre-installed as the desktop office suite in many distros like Ubuntu and Debian that ship the Gnome desktop environment pre-installed.

                              but would my ISP be impacted by Linux then?

                              It should not be impacted at all. 🙂

                              The simple aspect of my printer being compatible didn’t come to mind at first

                              If you install any popular beginner friendly distro (like the ones I recommended) everything should work out of the box and it is very unlikely that any extra drivers need to be installed. For example on Archlinux no printing programs/services and drivers come pre-installed or enabled.

                              So do not worry at all, if your laptop cover the main requirements, the distro should handle the rest automagically. If you have any more questions you can talk to me directly here on Lemmy, or we can figure something out.

                              One thing though, Mint is based on Ubuntu which itself is based on Debian. But it doesn't really matter.

                              Since you are going to check what software you need/want for your new Linux device, you can always fill the gaps with Flatpaks on Flathub, these are meant to be universal packages for every Linux distro and usually you can find there the packages that your distro does not package natively. You can even find proprietary software like Discord and such.

                              And again, if you have any more questions be sure reply or send me a message directly her eon Lemmy.

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                              wrote last edited by
                              #80

                              Thank you, that's such a kind offer! I might take you up on that! It'll probably be a bit 'cuz I need to take some time to look into programs and such that I didn't think of before to make sure what I'm used to is compatible and then I'll go from there! 🙂

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                              • P [email protected]

                                Oh, I didn't mean to be mysterious with shit, lol. Just basic torrents of TV shows and movies, haha. (Never went the streaming route, kept sailing the high seas.) I might download a book once in a while, but that's actually on my main.

                                I use VLC and Media Player Classic as my main video players on Windows, so VLC should be ok and if it isn't I'm sure I can find something else (I know MPC is Windows only).

                                I only do mobile games, not PC games, so not a concern for me there.

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                                wrote last edited by [email protected]
                                #81

                                MPV is the golden standard on Linux (and windows) TBH. There’s also some stuff to do to try and get picture quality and HDR looking better, if you’re interested.

                                But yeah, if you aren’t gaming you don’t have to worry too much about distro choice.

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                                • P [email protected]

                                  So anybody that I've ever personally known that I can think of and uses a Linux-based OS is either a programmer by trade, a CompSci grad that didn't go into the field in the end (but understands it if they were able to graduate obviously), or programs as a hobby. I personally know of no people outside of the realm of those that understand coding on some level that use Linux anything. So hopefully you can see how I would make that link in my mind.

                                  I could have been confusing seeing somebody on Linux using the Command Box thing as more intricate coding, but for somebody in my shoes, with limited tech knowledge, it all looks like coding and is a little intimidating.

                                  And yeah, the plan is to do an out-and-out install, not what I'm assuming a live boot is (I have a comment in a thread above). What I'm thinking feels very beyond me. An install feels like the better option for me. 🙂

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                                  wrote last edited by
                                  #82

                                  I could have been confusing seeing somebody on Linux using the Command Box thing as more intricate coding, but for somebody in my shoes, with limited tech knowledge, it all looks like coding and is a little intimidating.

                                  It is, I will agree with you. But it's not that complex . It's just... different and require we learn to use it, like when one learns a new foreign language of some sort..

                                  And, btw, I did learn to use it that command prompt... not because I was forced to but because I realized how effective it was. It's incredibly useful even though I barely use it at all, compared to experts. I run some scripts to prepare content for my website... First, I was doing everything by hand, which was a real pain, but it's so much simpler and faster to let a script do all the work. And, like I said in my previous comment, I'm anything but a coder 😉

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                                  • P [email protected]

                                    Ok, wait...I thought a partition meant that it was in effect a wall between different OSs if you had multiples on one computer, not like separate folders like in Windows Explorer (which is what I'm getting from this comment, if I'm wrong please let me know).

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                                    wrote last edited by
                                    #83

                                    A partition is a dedicated space on a disk. In windows there's not much use to partition a disk, but it can be done, and you would have a 😄 and 😧 drives with only one physical disk. I used to do that back in the day to have a partition for backups.

                                    If you only have one disk and want to have multiple OS, you need to partition the disk, so that each OS can write their data without interfering with one another. Essentially what you're doing is, like you said, putting a wall between areas in the disk, but you can do that regardless of having different OS in each side.

                                    In Linux things are a bit different, the representation of your disks is a file inside /dev, for example the first disk (non-nvme) Linux finds will be /dev/sda, the next one will be /dev/sdb so on and so forth, but since disks can be partitioned the first partition in your first disk is /dev/sda1, then /dev/sda2, etc. Then there's a file called /etc/fstab that has lines like /dev/sdb3 /home, this means that the 3d partition in the second disk will be accessible in the folder /home. You don't really need to worry about this file in general, during the installation there will be a nice GUI to let you say which partition goes where.

                                    How is that useful? Well, if you have the system in /dev/sda2 and your /home folder in /dev/sda3 you can format /dev/sda2 and reinstall the system or change the distro entirely without losing your data stored in /home.

                                    PS: I'm simplifying some stuff, but for reference :

                                    • you might see partitions jump from 2 to 6 in older systems, this is due to limitation in partitioning schemes for old disks
                                    • if you have a really old computer you will see /dev/hda1, this is because the s in sda refers to SATA, which essentially all disks are nowadays
                                    • nvme drives are /dev/nvme0n1
                                    • /etc/fstab has other parameters to tell it certain flags like mount read-only. Also it rarely used /dev/sda1 style naming because that might change if you swap the cables in your computer, instead it uses a unique identifier that's points to the correct partition regardless of order.
                                    • Partitions are not really a wall, instead the first bytes of a disk contain a table saying stuff like byte 0-61648716832 partition 1, bytes 61648716833-9274816418393 partition 2, etc. Old drives had limited space in that table so you had to create one partition for the rest of stuff and repartition that again, which is why partition numbers jumped from 2 to 6.

                                    but all that's besides the point.

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                                    • P [email protected]

                                      A Windows computer I had got massively fucked once like, 15ish years ago. No idea what happened. No new downloads or installs, I hadn't done anything different from any computer I've had before or since, just one day it stopped and it wasn't even that old, two years tops. Not a custom build, straight outta the box from Best Buy (maybe even Future Shop it was so long ago). My friend couldn't tell me what happened when they figured out how to get it at least booting up again. Only time it's happened. It was weeeeeeeiiiiird.

                                      Glad to know about the performance boost. 🙂

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                                      wrote last edited by
                                      #84

                                      Yeah, I've had bad random things happen with tech, only with systems that are closed though. When they are more open you can get logs, see what is happening, and eventually modify things until they work again. I had a phone that just wouldn't stay online for more than 5 minutes if the screen turned off. Screen on, internet working just fine. Screen off for 4 minutes, perfectly happy most of the time. Then suddenly around 5 minutes it would just die. It was running Android so I could see some stuff but I simply couldn't get the information I needed to figure it out. Linux is much more forgiving with logs and such giving actual error messages which with a simple copy paste can get you to a reasonable next step.

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                                      • P [email protected]

                                        Why would it be an issue to download a program if it's not for Windows or Mac? So long as there's a Linux-based option that works with your version, that is. There is one program I use multiple times a week that I doubt would be on any basic install package and the only place to find it is online. (Not an issue for the computer I'll be trying it out on as it's not my main, but if I find a version of Linux I like a put it on my main then it's something I'd have to consider.)

                                        O This user is from outside of this forum
                                        O This user is from outside of this forum
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                                        wrote last edited by
                                        #85

                                        It's not necessarily a problem, it just shouldn't be the first thing you try. On windows people are used to always downloading the program directly from the internet first thing, but on linux you'll have a better time if you check the package manager and/or flathub first for programs. Then, if it's not there, then yeah download direct from the internet.

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                                        • P [email protected]

                                          I don't trust myself with swapping out hardware, but maybe one day that might be an option for me, lol.

                                          rapchee@lemmy.worldR This user is from outside of this forum
                                          rapchee@lemmy.worldR This user is from outside of this forum
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                                          wrote last edited by
                                          #86

                                          it depends on your pc/laptop, some models are super easy, usually the ram and disk is on the more easily available side. try looking up a youtube video like "<my model> hd swap" or "<my model> disassembly" if the first doesn't work
                                          for example fujitsu-s are super simple, they have a compartment for the disk, just unscrew the cover, unscrew the hd, screw in the new one and pop it back in
                                          others are more complicated, but it's usually just removing the back cover
                                          in case you do it, keep track of the screws, where they come from, where you temporarily store them. it's a common issue that one ends up with a couple "extra" screws

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