• Talcosis@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    19 hours ago

    I legitimately tried to switch to Linux a few days ago. Got virtual ox running, got one of the recommended noob distros (cinnamon?) and then got an error message that I cannot make sense of during install. Even googling it didn’t help

    I’m not a computer guy, and I’m legitimately concerned that if I ask for help on the Linux forums I’ll be the punching bag of the week.

    • ∃∀λ@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      47 minutes ago

      Throwaway culture exists with software but without the waste that comes with physical things. If one distro doesn’t work, try a different one. It’s only bits. The only thing wasted is your time.

      Also, even though people claim to be happy to answer your questions, I think there’s a strong likelihood that if you said what issue you had, nobody would be able to solve the problem due to how complex any modern operating system is, and due to not having direct access to the machine to troubleshoot. Seriously, they’re so big and complicated that they’re approximately black boxes. The easiest way for you to resolve the problem is to try something different until it works.

    • ReptilianCleric@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      7 hours ago

      Just ask here! Lemmy is full of us Linux nerds!

      Do you have any external storage? You do not want an NTFS formatted drive for food backup if you’re going to switch; just recently, the NTFS support has finally improved, bit I still wouldn’t trust it. Exfat, or any other fat filesystem, should work fine.

      But, my advice? Just backup everything important, and then just follow a tutorial for installing Linux (probably Mint Cinnamon, unless you game a lot - in which case you might give Bazzite a try).

      Make sure you have a USB windows installer ready before; if you have to, you can just go back to windows that way.

    • AstralPath@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      12 hours ago

      Get a small SSD that you can install Linux on and go from there. Starting with a virtual machine is definitely the hard way.

    • ShredderFeeder@shredderfood.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      15 hours ago

      As much as I hate to endorse an AI (and I’m going to get hella down voted for it)…it’s one of the few actual good uses for it…

      You can ask plain questions, copy\paste error codes, and it will actually walk you through fixing problems like a non-judgy person would. ;-)

      Perplexity is my go-to when I’m troubleshooting something I can’t figure out.

      “How do I open and edit a word document in Linux?” Is a perfectly acceptable question to ask, things like that.used it when I was building this server to work through some concepts I wasn’t familiar with.

      • ridethisbike@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        8 hours ago

        I had been using duck.ai for a while and found it to be a frustrating experience. Switched to free Claude and ended up with way better answers and a better experience overall. Still made a couple mistakes, but not nearly as many as duck. My only complaint is the limitation on the length of the sessions for the free version.

        How is perplexity in that dept?

        • ShredderFeeder@shredderfood.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          48 minutes ago

          So far I’ve found it to be Pretty good… I do pay the $20/month “pro” membership but I’m pretty sure most months I cost them money. ;-)

          What drew me to perplexity is that it will give you footnotes on basically every statement so you can go read the reference material it pulled from. Not foolproof, but lets you see if it’s quoting an idiot or not… ;-)

          What I most use it for is debugging. You can just copy/paste trace files or logs into it and it will read the log like a book and tell you exactly what’s happening.

    • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      18
      ·
      19 hours ago

      You’ve got two things going on:

      1. If you are trying to switch, a virtual machine is a bad way to start and it’s the hard way. What you really want is to use Rufus or something (easy Google) to make you a bootable USB and you just boot in and play around. It MAY require you to change boot order in BIOS if you plug it in and reboot and nothing happens, but that’s an easy fix
      2. You want to ask for help. You only get “beat up” if it looks like you did nothing first and you are asking people to do it for you. Pretty much every place you go if you can say, “I want to do X, it doesn’t work so I tried Y and Z.” Nobody will say shit to you. Also, on Lemmy if you say you’re new, people like me and the other guy who replied will probably offer to just DM us directly (which for me you can).
      • Talcosis@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        19 hours ago

        Might try the boot USB route. I wanted to do a virtual box so I could easily test to see if my current games/programs work

        • GreatWhiteBuffalo41@slrpnk.net
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          12 hours ago

          You can also just search game name + distro name. Highly recommend looking at the newest results possible because A LOT of games now work on Linux thanks to steam and proton

        • RamRabbit@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          19 hours ago

          Going to second dream_weasel’s suggestion. Don’t try to game in a VM. That is going the ultra-hard route while you are still unfamiliar with the OS.

          My suggestion is to take a side/old computer you don’t use every day, format it, and install Linux on it. Completely blow away Windows on that machine. Then use it regularly until you get comfortable with it. You still have your main computer to lean on.

          Once you are comfortable enough with it, flip the script. Put Linux on the main machine and Windows on the side/old machine. You will find yourself turning on the side/old machine less and less.

        • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          19 hours ago

          I think that will require you to do some passthrough for drives and hardware which may not be trivial. If you’re close to something working, stick to it. Otherwise I think that VM road is mostly pain. Caveat: I have not tried to do VM stuff in probably 10 years so it could be easier now.

      • Talcosis@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        9 hours ago

        Error code Somethingxsomethingsomethingsomething hexadecimal-like

        Edit: Hx4d3cim4l