Some people are not well informed about Linux

[MurphCID]

I have a son-in-law who is in IT, think he maybe a software dev, or at least seems to spend his days in powershell. He has a closed mind to linux and I've given up having any discussions with him on that subject.

That is like my Brother. He is totally closed to linux and says "I do not want to have to learn <insert language here> to use the computer". Which he is referring to the command line. He is so close minded that I really feel sorry for him. Some people just cannot be reached no matter what. On the other hand, My 90 year old Dad says "Gee, I like this. Its great. Does everything I need it to do. How do they make money with this though???". lol..

My S.O. (girlfriend) I just made her do it. I took her windows away and put linux on. Now when she see's me having to do something in windows to repair a clients computer she says "Thats just retarded". lol..

Yes, but that is also our fault to some extent, years of so called "Linux Evangelists" telling people the Command Line is the ultimate, and so people have ended up believing that you HAVE to use the command line to get anything done in Linux. My friends who never used Linux before, were terrified of having to go back to "DOS days" of nothing but command line since that is all they knew about Linux. Mint and POP!_OS changed their minds since I set things up so they should never have to even open a terminal. In so many ways we did it to ourselves.

Also the perception that there is no software on Linux comes from people going "I can't make Photoshop, or AutoCad, or [insert random windows only software here]" and cannot find something that works "like" what they are used to using. It was a fight getting my daughter to use LibreOffice since she claimed only Microsoft Office worked right, so I set it up to save as a .docx instead of .odt. My friend Peter who got his first Mint laptop was of much the same mindset.

[MurphCID]

Attitude is everything. BTW, I used be a Windows "power user" but, even after four years of using Linux Mint, I'm still pretty much a Linux newbie. It is rather humbling. I successfully survived the transition because I came in with the understanding that Linux is not Windows and I was pretty much going to have to go back to square one.

Me too! I still just managed to put /home on a second drive on the Thelio, BUT I had to re-install Mint on that machine to do it, since I did not know any other way to get it done. In windows I just right click, go into properties and in place of C:\documents I tell it the path is now E:\documents, and boom! everything is on my "E" drive. So my music, photos, documents, etc all go to another drive with a couple of clicks and just telling it to go to a different drive. I have yet to figure out how to do that in Linux, and I am sure that I will have to go to the command line, and pray.

[MurphCID]

True that. Jay LeCroix of Learn Linux TV on YouTube is very knowledgeable but he probably scares a lot of Newbies off because he almost always uses only the terminal even there are usually GUI alternatives . I rarely watch his videos because of that. Another kind of video, which I especially despise, are the ones with no narrative, just a screen capture of the content creator going though the steps. I find those videos impossible for me to follow and I won't even bother to watch them anymore.

While I will use the terminal when I need to (when I can get complete, simple, step by step directions I can copy and keep since my memory sucks like a Hoover on steroids), I usually can find a GUI equivalent that is usually much easier to use.

When I'm talking to people about Linux and the almost inevitable fallacy of Linux being command line only comes up, I tell them the truth and say, depending on the distro they choose, their needs, and how someone set up their system, either themselves or for them by someone else, it may be necessary to use the terminal on occasion but that will be rare and, with good instructions, not at all difficult.

I also emphasize that Linux is NOT Windows (or, occasionally, Apple) and that they have to accept that they will have to unlearn much of what they know and relearn it, including replacing many, if not most, of their favorite programs or learning new workflows to accomplish their needs.

Too many people try Linux with unrealistic expectations and wind up leaving due to the disappointment they encounter. Or they think learning how to use Linux is too hard because they are too used to their previous OS or have forgotten how long it took them to learn how to use their previous OS.

YES! YES! THIS!!!!!

[AZgl1800]

I have mentioned in other threads about my sister, who is a died in the wool Windows user.

her PC died and I happened to be there.
asked her do you care what is behind that monitor, as long as you can see YouTube, Facebook, and Yahoo Email?

her: "no"

so, I installed LM20.3 Cinnamon, and very carefully massaged the screen and Menus to look like Win7, and I turned OFF Update Manager.

I did NOT want her to be faced with having to deal with Linux in any form....

2 years later, that PC is happily doing what she wants.
I snuck in last week and ran Update manager on it...

:
:

I overheard her talking to someone on the telephone last week.

" oh? my computer never gives me any problems.
even after the cat jerked the power cord out of the wall, it just booted right up and went back to Email.... it is one of those 'good PCs from Walmart'
"

I had to choke myself to keep from laughing out loud.

[BG405]

I snuck in last week and ran Update manager on it...

Also, the bit you added when I had my reply window open .. got to love that one. But .. what happens if the cat comes out of the bag rather than just tripping over the cable?

I honestly don't know if I'd have been able to keep a straight face ...

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Attitude is everything. BTW, I used be a Windows "power user" but, even after four years of using Linux Mint, I'm still pretty much a Linux newbie. It is rather humbling. I successfully survived the transition because I came in with the understanding that Linux is not Windows and I was pretty much going to have to go back to square one.

Me too! I still just managed to put /home on a second drive on the Thelio, BUT I had to re-install Mint on that machine to do it, since I did not know any other way to get it done. In windows I just right click, go into properties and in place of C:\documents I tell it the path is now E:\documents, and boom! everything is on my "E" drive. So my music, photos, documents, etc all go to another drive with a couple of clicks and just telling it to go to a different drive. I have yet to figure out how to do that in Linux, and I am sure that I will have to go to the command line, and pray.

I prefer moving only the personal data folders to /home so settings, etc. can be backed up with Timeshift and personal data can be backed up with another program. If you decide to go this route instead of keeping all of /home on a separate drive, this tutorial may help: viewtopic.php?t=411540

[AZgl1800]

that is similar to what I always did in the Windows OS.
the first time, I had a Blue Screen of Death, and had to do a new Install,
and then realized when that was done,
that Microsoft stores ALL of your documents in c:/user/...... and that is thrown away with the dishwater when you do a new install....

the people in MS land, do NOT seek out your old data and protect it, they just blindly format the entire disk.

me?
I created a special folder named /DATA,
and "AlwaySync" copied that to an External Drive every few seconds.

and everything fell under that, just like Linux does with /home

[NealG]

Over ten years ago a customer had given me her old Pentium II pc with XP on it. I wasn't sure if the XP registration was valid for re-installation, so I installed antiX along with dozens of games and gave it to the kids next door (the catch was that they had to accept a humongous and heavy 24" CRT monitor that I wanted to get rid of. ) When booting the pc in the neighbor's house, the kids' mom commented that the OS must be an expensive one (the wallpaper looked pretty cool). When I smiled and told her it was free, she was surprised and a little confused.

I'll bet that her kids likely learned a lot about Linux, maybe even continued using Linux on future pcs.

[AndyMH]

that Microsoft stores ALL of your documents in c:/user/...... and that is thrown away with the dishwater when you do a new install....

In the dim distant past when I was a win user, I always partitioned my drive, C: for programs, D: for data. Made backup easier. So when I moved to linux it was natural to have separate / and /home partitions.

[MurphCID]

I did that on the Thelio and it was pretty painless, although I did make some errors. But I wish that in Linux you could move your folders like windows with a right click > properties > new drive and boom! That would be wonderful.

I will have to re-install Mint on the Lemur and transfer my /home/documents to the extra drive I have in the computer. I would be wonderful if I did not have to re-install to get it done though. Good folks like RossDV, Lady Fitzgerald, MarieSWE, and others helped me figure it out and get it done, so thanks to all.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I did that on the Thelio and it was pretty painless, although I did make some errors. But I wish that in Linux you could move your folders like windows with a right click > properties > new drive and boom! That would be wonderful.

I will have to re-install Mint on the Lemur and transfer my /home/documents to the extra drive I have in the computer. I would be wonderful if I did not have to re-install to get it done though. Good folks like RossDV, Lady Fitzgerald, MarieSWE, and others helped me figure it out and get it done, so thanks to all.

You shouldn't have to reinstall the OS just to move just the Documents folder; I didn't.

[MurphCID]

I did that on the Thelio and it was pretty painless, although I did make some errors. But I wish that in Linux you could move your folders like windows with a right click > properties > new drive and boom! That would be wonderful.

I will have to re-install Mint on the Lemur and transfer my /home/documents to the extra drive I have in the computer. I would be wonderful if I did not have to re-install to get it done though. Good folks like RossDV, Lady Fitzgerald, MarieSWE, and others helped me figure it out and get it done, so thanks to all.

You shouldn't have to reinstall the OS just to move just the Documents folder; I didn't.

I am not sure how to do it otherwise, and the directions I looked at all seem to leave off steps which is one of the problems with so much documentation.

[billyswong]

I did that on the Thelio and it was pretty painless, although I did make some errors. But I wish that in Linux you could move your folders like windows with a right click > properties > new drive and boom! That would be wonderful.

I will have to re-install Mint on the Lemur and transfer my /home/documents to the extra drive I have in the computer. I would be wonderful if I did not have to re-install to get it done though. Good folks like RossDV, Lady Fitzgerald, MarieSWE, and others helped me figure it out and get it done, so thanks to all.

You shouldn't have to reinstall the OS just to move just the Documents folder; I didn't.

I am not sure how to do it otherwise, and the directions I looked at all seem to leave off steps which is one of the problems with so much documentation.

I think the safest method is linking the individual folders $HOME/Downloads, $HOME/Documents etc to same-name folder in another drive. Since symbolic folder link is transparent to almost every routine operations, one will in effect put personal files into the 2nd drive while keeping user config inside $HOME/.config or $HOME/.local etc within the system drive. Most user config aren't really portable across Linux distribution variants/versions anyway. For those that one is sure being portable, one may create further symbolic link for them. Example: $HOME/.mozilla and $HOME/.thunderbird

If all these looks tedious, one may also try booting into live USB, mount the original system drive together with the 2nd drive, copy the whole /home/$USER folder there, then override the original folder with symbolic link.

ps. For testing things out, one may try these methods in a test user account first. Since no reinstall and no risky mounting, we are safe even if the test user account got messed up.

[coffee412]

I run my /home folder on two mirrored drives (mdadm) seperate from the OS drive (SSD). Some procedures are slow to run like updates in VM's but that is because I house the VMs on the mirror. That is easily fixed if I want but not concerned really. Any who, As I remember this is how I setup the move of my home directory:

I do believe I created another user called "admin" and then logged in as that.
I did a rsync of the /home directory to the mounted raid (/mnt/raid1).

Code: Select all

cd /home
sudo rsync -a * /mnt/raid1

I then changed my /etc/fstab entry to this:

Code: Select all

/dev/md0	/home	ext4	defaults  0 0

I then rebooted system.

I would think that if you wanted to just move individual folders to another drive you could just rsync them and then setup softlinks to repoint the directories to them. I think though I would rather move the whole /home to the other drive(s) for simplicity sakes.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I run my /home folder on two mirrored drives (mdadm) seperate from the OS drive (SSD). Some procedures are slow to run like updates in VM's but that is because I house the VMs on the mirror. That is easily fixed if I want but not concerned really. Any who, As I remember this is how I setup the move of my home directory:

I do believe I created another user called "admin" and then logged in as that.
I did a rsync of the /home directory to the mounted raid (/mnt/raid1).

Code: Select all

cd /home
sudo rsync -a * /mnt/raid1

I then changed my /etc/fstab entry to this:

Code: Select all

/dev/md0	/home	ext4	defaults  0 0

I then rebooted system.

I would think that if you wanted to just move individual folders to another drive you could just rsync them and then setup softlinks to repoint the directories to them. I think though I would rather move the whole /home to the other drive(s) for simplicity sakes.

I agree that relocating the entire /home folder to another drive or partition is much simpler (I've done it) but that also moves all your settings, etc. which complicates backing them up and restoring them. By moving only my data folders, I can now include /home in my Timeshift snapshots without losing anything from my data folders.

I also tried leaving home in root, and including only hidden files in my Timeshift snapshots but, somehow, in a way I never could sus out, I would always manage to lose something in either my personal data folders or in my settings so I finally settled on moving only the personal data folders. It also complicated backing up the data folders with FreeFileSync (it was doable but setting up the profiles in FFS was a headache inducing PITA).

[Peter Linu]

Close-mindedness. Just the quality needed by a software developer!

[coffee412]

To each their own I guess

I backup my home directory to an external mirrored set. Not that complicated really

Code: Select all

rsync -a /home /mnt/external-backup-drive

I put it in a file and make it executable. Then put it in /sbin . Now its in my path and I can call it up anytime I want or put it in a cron job.

My thoughts on timeshift is that its main purpose is to do a snapshot/backup of your operating system. Your home directory should be treated as a separate backup job in another way.

[AZgl1800]

To each their own I guess

I backup my home directory to an external mirrored set. Not that complicated really

Code: Select all

rsync -a /home /mnt/external-backup-drive

I put it in a file and make it executable. Then put it in /sbin . Now its in my path and I can call it up anytime I want or put it in a cron job.

My thoughts on timeshift is that its main purpose is to do a snapshot/backup of your operating system. Your home directory should be treated as a separate backup job in another way.

Same principle, although I use an App by Tony George call 'Homi'
it only makes changes, not a full copy each time.
I presume that is what Rsync does also?

[coffee412]

Yes, rsync compares time stamps or whatever and only backs up the newer ones. There are a lot of command line switches to alter what it does too.

I like the command line option because I can change or add things in a bash script to enhance my backups and also schedule it in a cron.

[AndyMH]

I like the command line option because I can change or add things in a bash script to enhance my backups and also schedule it in a cron.

I do both script and GUI, rsync script under cron to backup to my NAS, timeshift and backintime to local drives.