I'm having network issues on Arch Linux, particularly with Steam download speeds, which fluctuate and are slower than usual. Additionally, I've noticed that things sometimes take longer than normal to load but usually load up after refreshing which makes me think the issue is not specific to Steam.

Here’s what I’ve tried:

• Tested on a Windows laptop which showed normal speeds.
• Reinstalled my system using Bazzite, which resolved the issue and showed normal speeds.
• Reinstalled Arch Linux, but the problem returned.

Other Info:

• Installed Arch with Archinstall using NetworkManager
• I'm on a wired connection
• DNS set to my router, which uses Quad9 DNS
• Steam installed via Flatpak

Any troubleshooting ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

What do I do, when my PC freezes?

Windows has ctrl+alt+del, does Linux Mint has something comparable? The only thing I know about is REISUB, but that borked my PC, so I am hesitant to use that again.

Are there any remaining alternatives to waiting and/or using the power button?

Edit: Thank you all for your insights and possible fixes. Crashes usually happened when I was running (cpu/ram?) heavy workload. Increasing swap space was not even on my radar, so I did that now. :) Hopefully Mint will run more stable now.

Windows keeps reminding be that I have to switch to Linux if I want to keep using my computer. It's a rugged tablet from about 2011 that I still use daily for internet and some light Photoshop. Core i7 1.2 GHz, 4GB RAM, and the important part, a built-in touchscreen and Wacom digitizer. Keyboard is an external device that I don't generally have attached. I grew up on DOS, so I'm not afraid of fiddling, but I'd rather this machine just worked. Any recommendations?

I want to hide the about tag in rEFInd. So, I did according to the info in config and website, which is to add a showtools line with no options.

And, nothing happens. I still see About, Shutdown, Reboot, Firmware tools in the rEFInd screen

# Default is shell,memtest,gdisk,apple_recovery,windows_recovery,mok_tool,about,hidden_tags,shutdown,reboot,firmware,fwupdate
# To completely disable scanning for all tools, provide a showtools line
# with no options.
#
#showtools shell, bootorder, gdisk, memtest, mok_tool, apple_recovery, windows_recovery, about, hidden_tags, reboot, exit, firmware, fwupdate
showtools

Eventhough the previous showtools line is a just a comment, I removed it too. And still nothing happens.

Does anybody have any idea?

I only want Shutdown, Reboot.

I installed CachyOS with Plasma DE and found it has no discover in it. When I searched on their sub lots of people say that one shouldn't use Discover with any Arch distro as it will break the system. Can anybody clarify why?

Also if I am not supposed to use Discover, can anybody suggest an actual GUI application store? Unlike Octopi (which I consider just as a TUI with check boxes and columns)

Edit: I only use Discover for find and install new apps.

For updating, I just use paru.

I run Debian 12 with KDE on my laptop. It is set up, that it locks the screen after 10 mins of inactivity. And that is typically want I want. But some times I use it with an external screen like a TV over HDMI to watch some videos, and forget to overwrite the setting to not lock the screen.

Is there some way to not lock the screen when connected to an external screen (and preferably to AC) but resume the previous behavior if no HDMI connection is made?

I've been migrating to linux recently and next headache on the list are my starr apps (sonarr, radarr, etc). On windows I just had them installed as background services but I wanted to give (rootless) podman a try on linux since everyone kept recommending it and saying how much better the experience is than on windows.

Anyway, I've set everything up and some of the services work, but specifically sonarr and radarr can't write to the main media folder with the error: Folder '/data/media/tv/' is not writable by user 'abc'

So, first of all, I didn't make user 'abc', it is some internal docker/podman/starr user allegedly and it's supposed to be mapped to my real user, which I did by providing the PUID=1000, PGID=1000 env variables.

Second, I tried to give read and write permissions to everyone for the placeholder folders but it didn't change anything. I don't think this is the issue since other services like the one for sabnzbd or jellyfin had no problems using folders I created.

Googling for the issue brought up some topics about NFS shares but I don't know anything about this - this is not a NAS or even some external drive, it's just podman installed on fedora.

Any help is appreciated, here's a pastebin of my compose file if it's relevant https://pastebin.com/uX9Saqvj

Hi. I read somewhere that you need to tinker with bios / secure boot? In order to install NVIDIA drivers on Linux. Is this true?

I could swear that my mouse is lagging on my second monitor but I don't how how to actually "prove" it, if there's even a way. I am dual booting windows with fedora workstation gnome and there is a noticeable sluggishness to my mouse control whenever I switch back and forth, but only on the secondary monitor. It is slight but it's messing with my muscle memory and constantly making me overshoot clicks and buttons. The main display seems to be fine, or at least it's less pronounced due to higher monitor refresh rate.

Is there any way I can measure it objectively and find the root cause? A diagnostic tool or an app that could test if something is wrong? It's a recent fedora installation and I've gone through all the nvidia driver and media setup steps at this fedora post-install guide but honestly I don't even know if this is a fedora, gnome, driver or wayland issue (or something else completely)

This is my disk layout:

500 GB Linux - BTRFS

100 GB Windows - NTFS

400 GB Storage - NTFS (shared between linux and windows)

I want to encrypt everything. For Linux I can use luks2 but what I'm supposed to do for Windows ? (No bitlocker please)

Will veracrypt replace refind boot manager?

Note: I am talking about the one that asks password before boot (full encryption)

I installed lots of OSs on my PC. The mistake I did was not backing up my EFI partition beforehand.

Now I deleted all the OS except CachyOS (Arch) and Windows.

Now I want to tidy up my EFI partition. I want to delete everything (even rEFInd) except Windows and Default ones like OEM. (I am gonna reinstall CachyOS ) Can anybody please assist me?

I already deleted the obvious ones like ubuntu and fedora. Anything else?

I know this is not necessarily a linux question but anyways 😅

Solved

Before proceeding with any of the following, I STRONGLY suggest you to make a full backup of your ESP (efi) partition.

I deleted everything on boot folder, since I didn't need grub or any of those files ( after searching everything individually on internet)

I deleted refind folder, since I didn't need refind boot manager.

I kept insyde folder, since they are my uefi provider.

I kept OEM , microsoft folders because I need windows and whatever my OEM provides.

I kept tools folder since that's just an empty folder ( I didn't know which OS created it)

Trying to set tight permissions on my future NAS.
The essential on what I have:
TrueNAS NFS storage <- mounted via NFS -> Proxmox VE Host <-> Debian 12 VM
That's all fine and so on.
My little Debian VM:

NAME   FSTYPE FSVER LABEL  UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
sda
├─sda1 vfat   FAT32        A5D7-88E3                             505.1M     1% /boot/efi
└─sda2 ext4   1.0          3c43a477-51fd-425b-aee8-a6e75224f781   48.5G    16% /
sdb
└─sdb1 ext4   1.0   media  e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281  933.2G     0% /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281
sdc
└─sdc1 ext4   1.0   nas    0f3a3d74-901d-4243-b20b-59210c1cee18   46.4G     0% /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-0f3a3d74-901d-4243-b20b-59210c1cee18
sdd
└─sdd1 ext4   1.0   backup fbe21b9f-2339-4223-ac7e-00e75374fc32   46.4G     0% /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-fbe21b9f-2339-4223-ac7e-00e75374fc32
sr0

Background:

• media = media library for Jellyfin
• nas = small (future) file server for my PC running Windows
• backup = used to store backups of various services like Firewall backups with SFTP etc.

The storage on the debian VM will be mounted by a NUC running bare metal Debian due to hardware acceleration. The proxmox host is unable to do it due to it also being a NUC. But I like the flexibility I will soon have because I can just nuke my bare-metal NUC without loosing any data.

Anyway my real problem is with permissions on my media drive.
My permissions right now are as following:

1. /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281# ls -l media
drwxrwxr-x 3 nobody nogroup 4096 Oct 12 20:45 media

2. /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281/media# ls -l data
drwxrwsr-x+ 6 mediaU serviceG 4096 Oct 13 00:21 data

3. /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281/media/data# ls -l *
drwxrwsr-x+ 7 mediaU serviceG 4096 Oct 13 00:21 media
drwxrwsr-x+ 2 mediaU serviceG 4096 Oct 13 00:21 recycle_bin
drwxrwsr-x+ 2 mediaU serviceG 4096 Oct 13 00:21 torrents
drwxrwsr-x+ 2 mediaU serviceG 4096 Oct 13 00:21 usenet

4. /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281/media/data/media# ls -l *
drwxrwsr-x+ 2 mediaU serviceG 4096 Oct 13 00:21 anime
drwxrwsr-x+ 3 mediaU serviceG 4096 Oct 13 00:22 movie
drwxrwsr-x+ 2 mediaU serviceG 4096 Oct 13 00:21 music
drwxrwsr-x+ 2 mediaU serviceG 4096 Oct 13 00:21 soundtrack
drwxrwsr-x+ 2 mediaU serviceG 4096 Oct 13 00:21 tv

Current directory tree:

srv-dev-disk-by-uuid-XXX/
└── media
    └── data
        ├── media
        │   ├── anime
        │   ├── movie
        │   ├── music
        │   ├── soundtrack
        │   └── tv
        ├── recycle_bin
        ├── torrents
        └── usenet

What I am trying is:

• Docker host mounts /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281/media via NFS
• The docker containers should only be able to access the the data directory inside it (2. ls -l) as mediaU:serviceG
• In addition I wanna access, modify and move files with my windows user without being part of the service group. Because of this I have setup SGID and ACL on the /media/data/media folder. The ACL was set recursive as follows:

/srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281/media/data# getfacl media/
# file: media/
# owner: mediaU
# group: serviceG
# flags: -s-
user::rwx
group::rwx
group:extUserG:rwx
mask::rwx
other::r-x
default:user::rwx
default:group::rwx
default:group:extUserG:rwx
default:mask::rwx
default:other::r-x

So far so good. mediaU:serviceG has RWX permissions (2775).
My user is part of the group extUserG also with 775 permission.

My issue and how I tested it under the root user executing commands via su:

• Works:
  root@NAS01:/srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281/media/data# su mediaU -c 'mkdir dir-mediaU'
• Doesn't work:
  root@NAS01:/srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281/media/data# su appoxo -c 'mkdir dir-extUserG' mkdir: cannot create directory ‘dir-extUserG’: Permission denied

BUT if I enter one level deeper inside the freshly created dir-mediaU folder I am able to create files with my personal account:

root@NAS01:/srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281/media/data# cd dir-mediaU/
root@NAS01:/srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281/media/data/dir-mediaU# su appoxo -c 'mkdir dir-extUserG'
root@NAS01:/srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281/media/data/dir-mediaU# ls -l
total 4
drwxrwsr-x+ 2 appoxo serviceG 4096 Oct 13 00:45 dir-extUserG
root@NAS01:/srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-e3e0eac5-806a-44e9-a0e9-07fb99a18281/media/data/dir-mediaU# getfacl dir-extUserG/
# file: dir-extUserG/
# owner: appoxo
# group: serviceG
# flags: -s-
user::rwx
group::rwx
group:extUserG:rwx
mask::rwx
other::r-x
default:user::rwx
default:group::rwx
default:group:extUserG:rwx
default:mask::rwx
default:other::r-x  

So dear Lemmy Community:
Have I done something wrong in my setup or thinking? I have no problem as it is right now but I am sure it will be annoying to troubleshoot in the future so might as well fix it while still setting it up.

Thanks in advance for helping slowly escaping the windows world :)

I installed CachyOS with BTRFS, LUKS2 , REFIND.

After successful installation I'm not seeing any prompt for password nor the linux boot entry on refind.

Note: I didn't do any lvm or raid.

What should I do?

Solved

I just forgot to create a boot partition 😮‍💨

Let's say i made 10 snapshots on top of the base.

Now can i delete snap no. 5? Will the snaps after 5 will be affected?

Solved

Yes, one can delete consecutive snapshots. The data won't be deleted unless all snaps ( reference points ) get deleted.

Note: If you delete the original file and delete all the snapshots made when the file is still there, the file will get deleted permanently.

Yesterday I tried to install the latest NVIDIA drivers on my Linux Mint laptop (version 21.3, Cinnamon Edition) and my Driver Manager said that, since i have Secure Boot enabled, I had to create a Mok key for my drivers so I could use them with Secure Boot. So I created a password and restarted my PC. However, I didn't know what to do in the MokManagement screen, so i turned off my PC and then turned it on again to be able to start over. After turning my PC on and off a few times to try a few different buttons thqt I ended up not understanding, I looked up a tutorial and tried to follow it. But when i clicked "Enroll MOK" this time, instead of showing "View Keys", it asked if I wanted to delete my existing keys.

What should I do to get this to work? I turned off my PC after this and switched back to the open source drivers because, again, I had no idea what to do. Did I fuck up my drivers? Can I try to redo the process to make it work? What about the extra keys I created? I'm really confused. Thanks in advance.

P.S.: I also just remembered I made some Timeshift backups before I tried to switch drivers. If I rollback to the backup will my keys be "overwritten" and I'll be able to try to switch drivers again with no consequences?

Dumb title but I didn't know how else to put this into words, bear with me for a sec - I am not just looking for the definition.

Years ago I tried Ubuntu which used GNOME and assumed that its desktop layout was "the default" GNOME. I later tried PopOS which also uses it and it was the same, and when eventually I installed Mint I saw that it's still fundamentally the same with some slight tweaks or different tools.

Well, few days ago I installed Bazzite (Fedora) which is also GNOME. It doesn't look anything like anything I've seen before, either in terms of mindset or technical layout. I've gone from an admittedly old-fashioned, but efficient and reliable!, layout and workflow to something that reminds me more of an apple product - its stylish, minimalist yet inefficient and utterly frustrating to get anything done with because of how opinionated it is.

When searching for common problems I often found comments saying stuff like "but try it out! it's in the spirit of gnome, it takes a while to get used to it but the philosophy is valid" and frankly I don't understand anymore what exactly gnome is and what are its design principles, if there even are any and every distro just does whatever the f it wants and call it "a gnome experience".

I'm running it on a 32-bit emulator, maybe that's the issue here? i don't know honestly

I need to remote desktop connect to a windows PC on a local network. This works flawlessly when done from my windows PC but I'm having issues on Linux Mint.

I'm using Remmina since it was the most common answer to a linux RDP client. I imported the RDP file from windows but I also created a connection with manually filled info.

First issue is that linux can't connect to the machine by its name - on windows ping MYPC-321 works, on linux mint it throws an error. However, ping MYPC-321.local does work, but if I try to use that as the address in Remmina, it fails again. Is there a way to connect using just name since I dont want to have to recheck the IP address every day?

But let's say this is for now resolved if I just use the local IP address. The second, main problem, is authentication. No matter what I put into the username and domain fields of Remmina's authentication GUI, it always instantly fails and Remmina reloads the screen without giving me any error. The credentials are the same as when connecting from the windows PC (although I dont have to specify the domain there) so I have no idea what could be the problem here.

Is there something else I'm missing, something fundamentally different about how this works on linux? I wasn't expecting for such a simple and straightforward thing to instantly cause issues.

Since I installed the official fan script, and it did nothing, I kept searching. I found a second user made script for controlling the fan, however I'm too inexperienced with linux to even understand what's being asked.

Full page is listed at

https://gitlab.com/DarkElvenAngel/argononed

How To Install Firstly you need to have a build environment setup, that includes the following gcc dtc git bash linux-headers make git NOTE : The package names will be different depending on your OS so I've only given their binary names. Refer to your distribution for what you need to install. I've tried to make the installer as simple as possible. After cloning this repo simply run ./install You may need to reboot for full functionality.

What does he mean "build the environment setup"? And how do I clone a repo?

I'm trying this out on raspberry pi OS 64 bit, which is listed as compatible. If I can learn HOW to do this, I'll do it on my main SD card OS, TwisterOS, which is also listed as compatible.

So I tried to install a fan script last night. It's supposed to be a 1 line of code.

But even though it's a brand new installation of ubuntu, my system says "No. You need to install curl first"

When I try to do that, my system says "no, you already have a more recent version of curl installed"

I'd love to copy/paste the exact text, so you guys could see what I see, but when I do that, either in comments or in new posts, Lemmy gets confused, and won't post it.

How do I get you guys a copy/paste of this, so you guys can say "Oh, you have to do this this and this"?

Ok, this is becoming what I remember not liking of not understanding linux.

I was supposed to just type one line of code

... curl https://download.argon40.com/argon1.sh | bash ...

And that led to me not having curl installed. After 24 hours of trying to figure this out, I finally figured out I need to type

... sudo snap install curl # version 8.1.2 ...

And so then I type

... curl https://download.argon40.com/argon1.sh | bash ...

again, and this time I get this.

... % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 19245 100 19245 ************* 0 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 0 0 0 4848 Argon Setup
0 0 --:--************* :-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 48598 E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend. It is held by process 6408 (unattended-upgr) N: Be aware that removing the lock file is not a solution and may break your system. E: Unable to acquire the dpkg frontend lock (/var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend), is another process using it?

Please also connect device to the internet and restart installation.

bighat@bighat-desktop:~$ ...

I have no idea what that lock is, or what to do. I was told "oh, it'll be easy, you just gotta put in this one line of code". Going on 4 years trying to get that fan to work...

I added more hard drives to my windows PC to dual boot as a test, then added another drive to actually play since I was enjoying Linux. My third OS isn't bootable any more. What have I done wrong?

Started off with Windows 10 on a SATA drive with an M.2 drive for more data.

Added a 2Gb NVME with Debian - this has become my daily driver. I haven't been to windows more than a few minutes a week.

Added another 250Gb SATA drive to test and play with another Debian install so I don't break my daily driver.

Tried today to boot into the test OS and It's just missing from GRUB? It doesn't show up as a bootable drive in my UEFI BIOS either, though the drive itself is seen.

From KDE Partition Manager in my daily driver Debian, the drives are:

/dev/nvme01 - the daily driver Debian

/dev/sda - the Windows OS drive

/dev/sdb - the windows M.2 drive

/dev/sdc - the test Debian drive (not booting)

I would appreciate help. While there's not much on that drive, I would like to continue my playing around.

Thanks in advance.

So, I am looking for any ideas, help or head(s) smarter than mine.

This is my main problem for some time now, easiest way to replicate this is to run anything proton related. After that, some apps just keep spitting this via dmesg:

[ 1403.146954] eartag[5309]: segfault at 30 ip 000077f7d796491c sp 00007ffe20a35210 error 6 in libgtk-4.so.1.1400.4[56491c,77f7d74c7000+4c2000] likely on CPU 7 (core 3, socket 0)
[ 1403.146964] Code: c2 4c 8d 4d c0 48 8d 35 02 75 4a 00 45 31 c0 0f b6 d2 e8 c7 4c 01 00 f3 0f 10 03 48 8b 55 c0 4c 89 fe f3 41 0f 58 07 4c 89 f7 <f3> 0f 11 42 30 f3 0f 10 43 04 f3 41 0f 58 47 04 f3 0f 11 42 34 f3

[ 1408.104856] gnome-system-mo[5360]: segfault at 30 ip 00007c02762ec29e sp 00007ffc399829d0 error 6 in libgtk-4.so.1.1400.5[4ec29e,7c0275e81000+4b5000] likely on CPU 1 (core 1, socket 0)
[ 1408.104871] Code: 48 8d 35 c5 6f 62 00 45 31 c0 e8 fd 0f 01 00 48 8b 45 b0 48 8b 5d c0 4c 89 ff f3 41 0f 10 04 24 f3 0f 58 00 48 89 da 48 89 c6 <f3> 0f 11 43 30 f3 41 0f 10 44 24 04 f3 0f 58 40 04 f3 0f 11 43 34

[ 1434.535310] blackbox[5476]: segfault at 30 ip 00007d7ba0f6491c sp 00007ffcc9c2bfb0 error 6 in libgtk-4.so.1.1400.4[56491c,7d7ba0ac7000+4c2000] likely on CPU 4 (core 0, socket 0)
[ 1434.535318] Code: c2 4c 8d 4d c0 48 8d 35 02 75 4a 00 45 31 c0 0f b6 d2 e8 c7 4c 01 00 f3 0f 10 03 48 8b 55 c0 4c 89 fe f3 41 0f 58 07 4c 89 f7 <f3> 0f 11 42 30 f3 0f 10 43 04 f3 41 0f 58 47 04 f3 0f 11 42 34 f3

[ 1519.054496] tidal-hifi[5241]: segfault at 0 ip 0000776c9650bccc sp 00007ffce741f1a0 error 6 in libnvidia-glcore.so.560.35.03[b0bccc,776c95e00000+c00000] likely on CPU 1 (core 1, socket 0)
[ 1519.054505] Code: 41 0f 7e ce 89 fd 48 8b 80 80 00 00 00 c1 e2 12 66 41 0f 7e d5 48 b9 72 0e 05 a0 04 00 00 00 81 ca 00 0e 00 80 66 41 0f 7e dc <89> 10 48 83 c0 1c 48 89 48 e8 66 0f 7e 40 f0 66 0f 7e 48 f4 66 0f

After a restart, all apps run perfectly fine of course and I can do whatever I need to do, until they stop working again.

• On one forum, someone was suggesting a problem with memory, so I memtested it hard — everything is fine

• On another, the idea was to reinstall intel-ucode package, this unfortunately didn't help neither

• Finally, I've tried sudo pacman -Qnq | sudo pacman -S - because it was a suggestion somewhere too, no changes after that

My boat:

Arch Linux x86_64 / 6.10.9-arch1-2
Gnome 46.4 / Mutter (X11)
@
ASUS Z97-PRO (Wi-Fi ac)
INTEL i7-4790 + NVIDIA GTX 1070 Ti

Big, fat thanks for your time!

Update: Idea from jrgd did the trick! I am still testing it, but so far, I can't force anything to fail and everything seems to be working fine!

So I’ve got an old Mac I use as a Plex server and I’m considering installing Ubuntu on a DOS-formatted partition I’ve already set aside. What I’m wondering is:

• Do I just need this one partition, or is it going to need an additional blank partition for VM/Swap?
• can I install Ubuntu on an external drive and then clone or dd the external install onto the internal partition I’ve set aside?

Can I change the location of BTRFS snapshots. I installed CachyOS, and it automatically setup BTRFS subvols.

This is the layout 👇

According to Arch wiki https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Snapper#Creating_a_new_configuration

Create a subvolume at /path/to/subvolume/.snapshots where future snapshots for this configuration will be stored. A snapshot's path is /path/to/subvolume/.snapshots/#/snapshot, where # is the snapshot number.

From which I understand that if I created a snap of /home (@home), it will save in /home/.snapshots (@home/.snapshots).

So, CachyOS configured to save snaps to separate subvol.

But, what I want to do is, Instead of just saving it in separate subvol, i want snaps to be saved on different btrfs partition. Maybe @home/.snapshots but on different partition.

Is that possible ?

I have an old HTPC that hasn't been used in about 4 years with Windows 7 on it. It ran fine with Windows 7 but didn't work well with 8 when that came out (or at least the Windows Media Center that we used as a DVR with a cable card didn't) so it's stayed on 7 ever since. I haven't actually used it in about 4 years and now of course don't want Windows 7 where it can connect to the Internet.

Recently I had the idea that I could install Linux on the computer and use it as a media server with Jellyfin, Plex, or something similar. Long-term when I have the finances I'd like to set up a NAS and server to build a self-hosted media library, but this should be a good starting point for now.

What I'm Working With

It's a pretty old computer. I bought most of the components in 2010/2011 anticipating moving out from my parents although I didn't actually assemble it until early 2012 when I finally moved out (and my brother actually assembled it as he moved in with me). Key components:

• Intel Core i5-750 (this is the original Intel Core i5, generation 0 as it were)
• Asus P7P55D-E Pro
• Zotac ZT-20404-20L (Nvidia GT240 R)
• 4GB DDR3
• 64 GB SSD
• 1.5 TB HD
• 1 TB SSD <- this is blank, purchased last week and what I planned to install Linux on

What I'm Trying To Do

I searched the main components on linux-hardware.org and they all showed results for running Linux, usually several varieties. I downloaded the Live CD/Installer for Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon and burned it to a DVD. I went with Mint since it seems to be one frequently recommended for Linux beginners and has a "just works" reputation. I want to install it on the new 1TB SSD I picked up and be able to still dual boot into Windows 7 for now (and in any case I'm not sure I'd do much with a 64 GB drive anymore). This is an old motherboard; it only supports BIOS, not EFI, but it almost sounds like that will be easier for the dual boot because I won't have to worry about Secure Boot. Once that's installed I'll try out Jellyfin, Plex, and Emby to see which work best with the various devices I have on our TVs. I'll also probably use the computer to rip some of our DVDs/Blu-rays to use with the server.

Problems I'm Having

I've run into two main issues so far:

First, while the computer boots and runs from the DVD, about 5-and-a-half minutes after the taskbar appears and I can start trying to do anything it locks up. Usually it would just freeze and become totally unresponsive, but last night the two times I tried it actually rebooted the computer. It's really slow to load; when the taskbar appears I try to click the Installer as fast as possible and it takes a little over 3 minutes to reach a state where I can start clicking options for the install. It's also really slow just to boot. From the time I click to start Linux Mint from the Isolinux screen until I reach a usable desktop in Linux Mint is at least 10 minutes, if not more (haven't timed that directly). I'm really not sure what the problem is here; just slow from reading the optical disc? Should I try to find a USB stick and boot from there (the computer has a couple USB3 ports but I'll have to find a spare thumbdrive)? Does this all run in RAM and 4GB isn't enough and that's why it crashes? Is Cinnamon too much for the system and I should try the Xfce or MATE versions of Mint?

Second, I thought with the Linux Installation it would be able to format and install to the new SSD without needing to do anything else, either by selecting "Erase disk and install Linux Mint" or "Something else" but the time I was able to do it fast enough to get to "Something else" the disk doesn't show up at all. It looks like I should use a GParted live CD first to partition the new drive, and then I can install Linux Mint? As I'm looking at various documentation it looks like I should put 3 partitions on the SSD, one for "/" (100 GB recommended by the Linux Mint docs), one for "/home", and one for "swap" (4 GB to match the RAM size)?

I guess as a bonus third question, it looks like once I have Linux installed the Linux installation process should also give me a boot manager that I can use to switch between Linux and Windows? Or does that require extra steps to enable? I'm comfortable editing the boot order in the BIOS. My only prior experience with dual booting a computer is an old Mac Pro that could change the Boot system in Settings/Control Panel, or hold a button on startup to bring up a menu that would allow selecting the boot OS.