So it begins.

I’ve been flashing my USB often enough that it’s now worth it to keep all my ISO’s neatly to use them when I need them. I plan on buying 10 USB sticks to just have ready when ever I need a specific version.

I’m visiting family now, so time to upgrade their Linux Mint to Kubuntu

  • Labna@lemmy.world
    1·
    4 months ago
    1. you need Ventoy to stop formatting you’re USB sticks
    2. Keeping lot of ISO is a bit useless just the few that you use daily.
    3. If you’re keeping this ISO anyway, get them by torrent and keep sharing for helping the community
    • Retro_unlimited@lemmy.world
      0·
      4 months ago

      Ventoy is great, it’s my go to tool, boots on basically everything (even my MacBook) but… wasn’t there a scare about possibly being compromised because it builds itself from hundreds of modules on github or something like that?

        • Kory@lemmy.ml
          0·
          4 months ago

          First you need to download the provided file from the distro page. Something with Checksum in the name most of the time. The website should provide instructions. Please note that does not validate the gpg key.

          Quick Method Terminal: Open the terminal at the location of the ISO file or go there with cd. Type sha256sum NameOfIsoFile.iso - it takes a moment depending on your system. Copy the output (some long numbers/letters). Compare it with the downloaded checksum-file - open the file, press ctrl-f or whatever you have for find and paste it. If it’s found, it’s the same.

          Method KDE: Right click the file, open properties, then go to tab “Checksums”. Paste same number/letter combination from above into the provided space “Expected checksums…” - if it’s green, it’s correct.

          • SMillerNL@lemmy.world
            0·
            4 months ago

            While checking checksums is important, it you’re getting them from the same place as the download you might as well ignore the checksum. If someone can replace the download they can very likely also replace the checksum file download.

        • floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          0·
          4 months ago

          Just use the appropriate command for the hash type, i.e. sha256sum <filename> (iirc, might be wrong, man is your friend)

  • a14o@feddit.org
    0·
    4 months ago

    If I saw that folder name while using a friend’s machine I would know not to click on it to respect their privacy.

    • radswid@feddit.org
      0·
      4 months ago

      isn’t it the other way? Ubuntu/Kubuntu -> Mint -> Arch-based (Manjaro, …), Arch … -> “btw”

      • thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        manjaro -> ubuntu -> most other distros

        There are no “outstanding good distros”, there are bad ones to avoid, and ones suited or not suited for your use case

      • dogs0n@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        4 months ago

        I mostly found it funny they felt the neet to upgrade from mint on a family members computer to anything else, because I can’t imagine mint not already working fine for them.

        I fail to see the benefit in “Upgrading” to kubuntu (or anything else) in this case.

        But yes u right hehe arch btw but also mby mint btw 🤔

        • Chais@sh.itjust.works
          0·
          4 months ago

          I think that term gets confused frequently in this context. Stability as the Debian team likely uses it means mostly static APIs. Meaning a stable interface to develop software against.
          The way the users mostly understand it means stable software, no major bugs or crashes.
          And while those two are linked, they’re not the same. Anecdotally, I’ve used Arch for over 10 years and had only three breakages. Two because I forgot to check for manual intervention before upgrading and one because the battery of the laptop died during an upgrade. All were easily fixed from a live environment, no reinstall necessary. Yes, there were bugs and even crashes in software, but those were upstream issues. I admit that’s not a distinction a user is likely to make. I still consider Arch the most stable distro I’ve ever used.

    • ColdWater@lemmy.ca
      0·
      4 months ago

      For me seem like Ventoy is fucking with Arch iso and can’t be install from it, now my 64GB USB is only contain an Arch install, probably be I’m doing something stupid idk

    • Hi Hello@lemmy.world
      0·
      4 months ago

      I wish I knew how it worked before! I thought it was a Windows only software and I kept installing isos to my USB one by one every time. Wasted so much time :')

  • FoundFootFootage78@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    Don’t “upgrade” to Kubuntu. I’m on it and want to upgrade away because Ubuntu. Fedora Kinoite is probably the best bet if you want KDE for a tech novice.

    KDE is really annoying though. Kate is a horrible text editor if you’re not a programmer, and Kwrite has weird default shortcuts without any preconfigured “Gnome/Windows style” available. The Dolphin File Explorer doesn’t allow you to sort and group by different things. And Kparted isn’t as easy to use as Gnome Disk Utility. Still, I like how KDE had better themes than Cinnamon and how it actually lets me move programs to different categories in the start menu.

      • FoundFootFootage78@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        I tried OpenSUSE and I ran into various issues installing software. Plus the immutable variant of OpenSUSE is an external project IIRC.

        • JamesBoeing737MAX@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          0·
          4 months ago

          Yep, suse is cool, the default firewall config is way more restricted (safer but annoying at times). Dbeaver can’t install some essential depends for some reason and shotcut is missing some features (I could try fixing it but for now I just use appimages). It is way more stable than fedora or arch, even if I sometimes forget to upgrade it for months.

          • FoundFootFootage78@lemmy.mlEnglish
            0·
            4 months ago

            OpenSUSE seems to not accept donations from ordinary users, which suggests their target is more the server side. I think a daily driver distro should probably be a daily driver distro and not a server distro.

    • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
      0·
      4 months ago

      Or if you want to install an entire iso in less than a minute, one of these.

      I really like that one. I can move a terabyte in minutes, and unlike some other M.2 enclosures, this one is a heatsink sandwich, which enables sustained full-speed operation.

      • Leon@pawb.socialEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        I’d recommend a HDD enclosure with a virtual drive emulator. I personally use this one which I’ve had for about a decade at this point. Lovely device. At some point I think I’ll pop an SSD in it instead, mostly just for durability purposes.

        • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
          0·
          4 months ago

          Sure.

          But that’s limited to SATA 3 speeds. A “mere” 600 MB/s. Not to mention SATA SSDs often can’t sustain their theoretical maximums.

          USB3.2x2 can do 2500 MB/s, and with heatsinks on an NVME drive you can actually reach and sustain that transfer speed.

          When you’re moving more than 500 gigs of something, or if you move ISO sized things often, it’s really nice.

          When I occasionally have to write an ISO to usb for macOS or when ventoy for some reason wont work, I get annoyed at how I actually have to wait a bit, even though my thumbdrives aren’t slow.

          They’re just not NVME with a heatsink fast. I’ve gotten used to moving ISOs around like they’re text files.

      • db2@lemmy.world
        0·
        4 months ago

        It may not work. I have two ssds like that and they both won’t boot ventoy for some reason, but a hdd in a usb case worked no problem.

        Also, unless you’re using the usb3 interface it doesn’t make much difference really.

        • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
          0·
          4 months ago

          I use this one professionally, yet to come across a PC that wouldn’t boot from it.

          And yeah, you won’t benefit unless the PC also has both fast ports and fast storage.

          But half of the time I’m using it to move files from a customers old PC to their new one, and more aften than not, even the old one has at least one quick usb C port.

        • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
          0·
          4 months ago

          True. But if you have an old one laying around, from a laptop, desktop or whatever, even a low end one will saturate usb while beating 2.5" hdds.

  • thethunderwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    Maybe not Kubuntu? It’s not de-Canonical’d like Mint or Pop!_OS, so it’ll have weird bad things like Snap or the not-yet-ready Rust coreutils.

  • azvasKvklenko@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    Don’t distrohop too much, at one point there won’t be much more to explore with other distros other than wallpapers and themes

  • rozodru@pie.andmc.caEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    10 USB sticks? why? just use ventoy and throw them all on an external SSD or something. that’s what I do. can even use that with specific dotfiles you need for each distro along with ventoy. much easier to deal with than 10 usb sticks.

  • utopiah@lemmy.ml
    0·
    4 months ago

    Ugh… why? I mean it’s a fun process to distro hop and better understand the different package managers, boot process, default services, etc but beyond that I’m confused at what the point is.

    FWIW one can distro hop “virtually” in minutes using containers via Podman or Docker (or even QEMU to be more isolated) with images that do have a window manager, e.g. https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-webtop/ provides Alpine, Arch, Debian, Enterprise Linux, Fedora and Ubuntu with i3, KDE, MATE or XFCE. Switching from one to another takes minutes (basically download time of image content) and if you mount the right directory you can even use your own content for your tests.

    Edit : if one wants to install nothing https://distrosea.com/ is quite neat but it’s online.

  • realitaetsverlust@piefed.zipEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    I can assure you, you will never need them.

    I got a USB stick with ventoy installed, got a gparted and an arch linux iso on that thing, I do use those regularly.

  • Evil_Shrubbery@thelemmy.club
    0·
    4 months ago

    I think I’m missing something here - why would y’all need a storage of ISOs?
    Just think of a distro & download it from like anywhere at that moment? Especially if there is a functioning PC you are about to “upgrade”. That way you don’t need to think ahead of anything & get the latest ISO.