What Linux users can do to help increase the adoption of their chosen desktop operating system.If you are interested in Linux, the first episode in my "Linux...
I have the same issue with Windows. I’ve been using Linux since I got my first PC. Trying to navigate Windows is a pain in the ass. It’s just old programs somehow put together. When I find some solutions online it’s often opening who knows what via Windows+R or better yet, changing something I have no idea about in regedit.
And even the most basic things are hidden away by many steps.
I feel you, I’m sure a lot of it comes down to familiarity. I just very recently did a fresh reinstall of windows and endeavour in a dual boot. And honestly the Calamares installer is a lot nicer than the windows one. But doing simple things like just writing to a secondary hard drive is a non-issue in windows whereas in Linux it was a whole learning adventure.
But doing simple things like just writing to a secondary hard drive is a non-issue in windows whereas in Linux it was a whole learning adventure.
What do you mean by that? Are you talking about RAID, having some partitions on separate drive or something else? Because if you mean just using secondary drive for files that’s just as easy as on Windows with most distributions.
Or did you mean installing programs to secondary drive? Yeah… I have no idea how that can be done. By a quick 4 minute search it seems… that it’s a problem.
So yeah, I can see a problem here. So many computers have something like 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD.
No, just a secondary hard drive. I use it for Windows and Linux so it’s ntfs. I was just trying to save a file to it but it said I didn’t have access, turns out I needed to specify ntfs-3g in the fstab file before I could write to it.
ntfs is a windows filesystem, so you’d have the same problem in windows if you used a linux filesystem that isn’t supported out of the box by the windows os.
NTFS is proprietary FS that works on Linux thanks to great reverse-engineering efforts. To make this more fair, try accessing ext4 partition from Windows. Oh, it can’t even recognize it. Except that ext4 is open-source, so it wouldn’t even require reverse-engineering.
That said, have you fully shutdown Windows? You generally get write access out of the box nowadays, but only if Windows is fully shutdown. And clicking “Shut down” does not properly shut it down unless you disable fast startup.
Another method is to choose a “Restart” in Windows, and then instead of continuing with the restart, choose Linux on bootloader screen after you get there.
I’m mostly just speaking to the process. I can right click and mount the drive without a problem, but there’s no way to auto mount it on startup without editing the fstab file and finding the uuid of the drive through the terminal (at least as far as I could tell) all of the functionality is there, which is rather laudable, but the process is unapproachable for a lot of people.
O and yea, I did have to disable some fast startup setting in windows to get the write access, I forgot about that. But yeah, that one’s on Windows.
edit: sorry, this was actually pretty irrelevant to what I actually said, which was just about the write access which you pointed out was a windows issue. I got mixed up with my replies.
but there’s no way to auto mount it on startup without editing the fstab file and finding the uuid of the drive through the terminal (at least as far as I could tell) all of the functionality is there, which is rather laudable, but the process is unapproachable for a lot of people.
I haven’t tested it, but gnome-disks (pre-installed in e.g.: Ubuntu and Linux Mint) does have that option:
Which distro and DE are we talking about?
I have the same issue with Windows. I’ve been using Linux since I got my first PC. Trying to navigate Windows is a pain in the ass. It’s just old programs somehow put together. When I find some solutions online it’s often opening who knows what via Windows+R or better yet, changing something I have no idea about in regedit.
And even the most basic things are hidden away by many steps.
I feel you, I’m sure a lot of it comes down to familiarity. I just very recently did a fresh reinstall of windows and endeavour in a dual boot. And honestly the Calamares installer is a lot nicer than the windows one. But doing simple things like just writing to a secondary hard drive is a non-issue in windows whereas in Linux it was a whole learning adventure.
What do you mean by that? Are you talking about RAID, having some partitions on separate drive or something else? Because if you mean just using secondary drive for files that’s just as easy as on Windows with most distributions.
Or did you mean installing programs to secondary drive? Yeah… I have no idea how that can be done. By a quick 4 minute search it seems… that it’s a problem.
So yeah, I can see a problem here. So many computers have something like 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD.
No, just a secondary hard drive. I use it for Windows and Linux so it’s ntfs. I was just trying to save a file to it but it said I didn’t have access, turns out I needed to specify ntfs-3g in the fstab file before I could write to it.
ntfs is a windows filesystem, so you’d have the same problem in windows if you used a linux filesystem that isn’t supported out of the box by the windows os.
NTFS is proprietary FS that works on Linux thanks to great reverse-engineering efforts. To make this more fair, try accessing ext4 partition from Windows. Oh, it can’t even recognize it. Except that ext4 is open-source, so it wouldn’t even require reverse-engineering.
That said, have you fully shutdown Windows? You generally get write access out of the box nowadays, but only if Windows is fully shutdown. And clicking “Shut down” does not properly shut it down unless you disable fast startup.
Another method is to choose a “Restart” in Windows, and then instead of continuing with the restart, choose Linux on bootloader screen after you get there.
I’m mostly just speaking to the process. I can right click and mount the drive without a problem, but there’s no way to auto mount it on startup without editing the fstab file and finding the uuid of the drive through the terminal (at least as far as I could tell) all of the functionality is there, which is rather laudable, but the process is unapproachable for a lot of people.
O and yea, I did have to disable some fast startup setting in windows to get the write access, I forgot about that. But yeah, that one’s on Windows.
edit: sorry, this was actually pretty irrelevant to what I actually said, which was just about the write access which you pointed out was a windows issue. I got mixed up with my replies.
I haven’t tested it, but gnome-disks (pre-installed in e.g.: Ubuntu and Linux Mint) does have that option:
ahh, that’s good to know, thanks.