You made a 73 yr old happy as just what the commenters said you explained slow and carefully and the screenshot where big enough for me to read. I replayed multiple times and then ran my own file explorer and I could see what you meant. Most other tutorials are filled with unexplained acronyms , but you took pity on me and told me what each acronym meant, thank you so much. I am looking forward to the next extension to this video. Give my regards to Stanly and Mr. Scissors.
I just switched over to Linux, specifically Ubuntu, about 3 to 4 months ago. I definitely have no plans of going back to Windows. Regarding the topic discussed in this video, I was not very clear about it until now. All the information was explained in a very nice and easy-to-understand way, and I've decided to watch it a few more times to properly absorb the content. I'm really grateful for your efforts and very happy to have come across your channel. Keep up the good work!
I've also recently made the switch. This video provides a great foundation to understand what the commands used to set things up are doing and why you are using them. I think that deeper level of understanding overlooked by most tutorials is a huge help in getting to the next level of understand where you can do things without having to follow a guide. Personally, sense the end of support for windows 10, I've switched over to linux. I considered using something more complex like arch, but having limited experience with it figured I'd start with Ubuntu as well. Now's a great time for it as they've just recently released their LTS 24.04.1 version. Perhaps I'll switch over to something that offers greater control in the future when I'm more comfortable with the environment. I didn't want to make a complete break from windows so I still have my old windows boot drive installed and I can still boot to it, but I haven't found the need. My AMD CPU doesn't have integrated graphics, but I do have two GPUs installed, so I set one up for PCI passthrough and spun up some VMs. I'm actually writing this comment from a Windows 10 VM running on my linux machine. It's not quite as seamless as running windows on bare metal, but it works alright. It took a whole weekend to get that all up and running the way I liked. Passing through my USB headset, sharing my keyboard and mouse with Evdev, sharing directories between the host and VM. Now that I have this setup there are so many other things to try. I've also set up a bridge connection so that I can access my VMs from my LAN. That has opened up a whole new world of networking options. I set up a shared drive with samba and configured the firewall to allow connections through with UFW. Now I can easily move files to and from my computer from my phone or any other device on the network. I set up RDP on my host so that I can remote in from the guest or from anything on the network with a client. I'll have to switch to a Windows 10 pro version from home to be able to remote into it, but with it being a virtual machine I don't even have to take my computer out of commission to do that. I'm currently setting up a raid 5 array with three of my 6tb iron wolf pro HDDs. This way even if one of my hard drives fail I won't lose my files. And with the built in write-intent bitmap, enabled by default, prevents write holes, so even if the system crashes midwrite the array isn't corrupted. The next step will be setting up an openVPN server with DynamicDNS. This way I'll be able to connect to my local network from anywhere despite having a dynamic IP. It's been so much fun learning how to set all of this stuff up and that's all in the first week. It has really inspired me to push harder to expand the depth and breadth of my knowledge. Now I have all sorts of project ideas. I'd like to switch from my TPLink router either to ubiquiti or mikrotik router then set up some VLANs. I'd love to be able to run some cheap IoT devices without neccicarily giving them access to everything on the network or even internet access. I don't have a smart TV, but if I did I wouldn't want it dialing home. I think I might switch to a PFSense router/firewall at some point, but I'd still need a wireless access point and I want to move away from TPLink. I trust TPLink about as much as I trust Lenovo or Huawei. I'm even thinking about trying some security stuff. I took a SANS course on security a few years back. While I enjoyed it I don't think I've really retained much of it because there's hardly a need for me to run stuff like metasploit or sqlmap. I've always been curious about how one could exploit a bufferoverflow to actually execute something. Even with a gigantic NOPsled you'd think with address space layout randomization it'd be impossible to get the program counter to land on your shellcode. Maybe I can write something to make that happen. I recently heard about some vulnerabilities in the vector instructions of some of XuanTie's RISC V cpus. I don't have a c910 or c920, but I've got a c908, so I can't do that actual ghostwrite vulnerability, but maybe I can figure out something to do the one impacting the chip I've got. There's probably a proof of concept on github I can use. I've spent so much time writing boring .net webapps and just generally being trapped by Windows. I feel so much better having broadened my horizons.
I have found that Ubuntu 24.04, and all it's variants, to be very buggy. When 22.04 was running, it was perfect, but now they made it into a train wreck. I stick with Debian 12 these days.
@@rootcanal7188 Ubuntu has been slowly going to the "dark side", I'm afraid. They insist on their own "snap" package format, and it really isn't ready for prime time. Apps start too slow, the sandboxing gets in the way all the time (like trying to use "open with..." from the file explorer often just doesn't work at all), it creates this weird "loopback" file systems that are messy cluttering up your file system view (doing "lsblk" on Ubuntu with a load of snaps installed, lists a false "block device" for every single snap - it's really annoying when you're trying to sort out your actual disks to have all this bullshit cluttering up the listing). And, on the philosophical side, though "snap" is open source, no-one else uses it. Not technically proprietary, but it might as well be. Ubuntu had gone down the "dark side" before. Where everyone else was going to move to Wayland to replace the aging X window system, Canonical (makers of Ubuntu) decided to make their own one. Why? Don't know. When it didn't go anywhere and no-one was following suit, they eventually gave up on it. Ubuntu used to be the distro that was recommended. But, these days, I'd say it's Linux Mint. Linux Mint is actually derived from Ubuntu - but it was forked away from Ubuntu by people who really didn't agree with where Canonical was going. Yeah, Ubuntu is getting worse. I'm on Ubuntu 22.04, just because I started with Ubuntu back in the day and have kept going with it. But I'm resisting 24.04, though it keeps reminding me to upgrade, and 'm tempted to jump to Linux Mint instead. Or maybe Debian itself (the distro they all derive from).
Long time user... never really understood the mounting designations and didn't really care but this video cleared up a lot of things for me. Thank you so much.
Very true. Indeed I now find drive information in Linux easier to understand than Windows as the information is laid out plainly in front of you with only one terminal command.
It's also a lot more flexible as a result. Having a storage drive that I dedicate to my media server mounted inside my home directory's video folder is so much more convenient than having to build an entirely new directory structure under a different drive letter
@@seto007 You can mount drives to folders on Windows for I don't know, like 20 years? There's no need to use drive letters at all. You can even mount UNC paths (network shares) to folders and present them like regular folders on your regular local drive. Windows is very flexible in this regard, much more than Linux is. I would love to see Linux handling network / UNC paths like this, unfortunately it does not. It also does not allow me to mount anything in some kind of "This PC" view, which is what the drive letter abstraction makes possible. All in all, flexibility is on the Windows side of things, if you know your business. EDIT: No need for drive letters is what I said, that's true, but you need C:\ at least for Windows itself, but you still can mount C:\ to any folder as well.
@@ExplainingComputers Hi, do you find Ubuntu 24.04 to be buggy? I found 24.04 and ALL variants to be so buggy as to be unusable. Am I doing something wrong, or should I just stick with Debian 12? Thanks.
@@rootcanal7188 Just my two cents. Stick with the distro that works for you. From my limited experience, some distros work on particular hardware better than others. I like Mint but it doesn't like my laptop, was a bit 'buggy', so I switched to Ubuntu, which seems to work better. No OS is free from 'bugs', if your system is working well then do regular 'Timeshift' system backups [on external drive] of it to restore to, if in the future you get a spanner in the works.
@@Praxibetel-Ix They probably used switchroot, just google it. I currently use the Ubuntu variant and it is quite usable. HD youtube playback works and general web browsing is good. All the drivers work perfectly, including GPU, sound, USB, networking, bluetooth, and even the joycons. You can even dock the switch to an external monitor and use it as a mini PC. A really good project if you need a spare HTPC (that is what I used mine for before getting a MacBook).
FYI: All Unix-like operating systems such as BSD and even MacOS largely function as described in this video. Windows with its legacy drive letters, is the outlier.
When the disk drive on my Windows laptop broke, I revived it with Linux Mint on a USB stick. Then I discovered I didn't even need Windows and have been using Linux full time ever since. Linux will only improve and the days of Windows are numbered. Thanks for the helpful videos!
I started using Mint around the start of the year myself! Alas, I still have to use Windows for a couple certain things but for everything else? Linux all the way!
@@Praxibetel-Ix Apart from Photoshop that I used to use EVERY day, (seriously, I used to have it load on start up!) I don't miss Windows. I can still Wine Photoshop if I'm desperate, but I no longer need Adobe. For artwork, especially since the rise of A.I. I have abandoned digital art & am returning to traditional media. Which is a kick in the guts for me as I always loved digital artwork & what it could produce.
I really appreciate the way you present content! SLOW, clear, and articulate!!! Some UA-camrs speak SO fast, I can't understand them, and have to playback at reduced speed. So, THANK YOU!
This video came at the perfect time for me. I knew I wasn't upgrading to Win11 with all its built-in privacy issues, but a couple weeks ago my Win10 was giving me problems and I got fed up and chucked it. I'm now 100% on Linux Mint Mate. I'm over 60, and if this old man can do it then so can you. Stop letting Microsoft mine your personal data.
I liked this video a lot. I keep my home directory on a seperate hard drive. This is absolute paradise. All of my personal files are in home, and all of my software and data are all in flatpaks also in my home sirectory.
This video is very helpful. Recently switched one of my Windows 10 laptops over to Ubuntu 24.04 and I’m impressed with it. This video answered a few questions I was curious about. As always, looking forward to your next video!
It is quite obvious that your calling in life is to be a teacher. Everything was wonderfully explained and though I knew most of the things, I still found value in watching your whole video. Thank you for everything you've uploaded over the years. I still remember buying my first SSD to switch out my wife's slow hard drive years ago and landing on one of your videos where you showed me how to create an image of the disk and write it to the smaller SSD.
I can deal with that start counting from 0 vs 1, but what I find really frustrating on Linux is the fact, that these device ids or numbers change, if you add / remove devices. /dev/sda is "sda", even though it is connected to the second SATA port. If you connect something to the first SATA port, "sda" becomes "sdb" and you have a new "sda", what are the Linux developers smokling? The same happens for network card interfaces if you add / remove them, which screws up the machine, just like the enumeration changes if you add any drive . It's bad, you can like Linux how much you want, this is just bad. Not booting into the OS if one of the drives referenced in fstab is missing is also bad, at least if there is no option to just ignore missing devices and keep booting into a working system. A Linux desktop is like lipstick on a pig.. oink oink! o))
You provide a great resource. So useful to those of us that could never work this out for ourselves, but are capable of grasping the technical details when explained by someone who explains things so well. You are a gifted teacher.
Brand new Ubuntu user (installed on Thursday). As always, Chris, you explain your topic completely and clearly for the novice (or even some experienced users). I'm going to rush to your terminal video. Can't wait for your new video on this subject. Thanks Chris!
Thanks Chris for an excellent & well explained video. Coming from Windows to Linux it does take a bit of time getting used to, the way drives & partitions are marked out, I always take notes as I find this helps make sense of things. I occasionally use ‘Disks', my go to is 'Gparted', for adding, partitioning, resizing drives or changing a file system. This can be downloaded from the ‘Software Manager’ if it’s not already installed on your distro.
Relatively new Linux user here, driven away from Windows 11 by Microsoft. I love your educational videos and refer back to them as I need to for years after you make them. This is another gem.
While working at Free Geek here in Toronto (A social enterprise refurbishing and redeploying computers to low-income clients and other social agencies.) We developed a standard installation procedure for desktops and laptops for Linux. As part of that we partitioned the drives so that there was a partition for the OS and temp files and then there was a second partition for user data. That way if the clients messed up their system, we could quickly restore it and their data was kept safe.
I just checked out your website, very impressive focus and values! We have a similar service in Kitchener, dealing with the same demographic. We also have an organization, with a much larger mandate, including refurbishing bicycles, etc.
@ I’m actually looking for someone to help me get a small server (hp DL G9) up and running g with Ubuntu server and update its firmware ( I have the firmware image). Then configure it as a home lab. I had RHEL developers edition but have been locked out since the licence expired.
Excellent video, enjoyed it a lot. I learned quite a bit.... This could be a series. You could probably cover a whole lot of topics on this.... Thank you for your time; Monte
Thank you Chris. As always, you did an excellent job of explaining followed up with examples. What surprised me the most was the Disks application. The mount/unmount button and gear icon. Very exciting and will be helpful for me going forward. Cheers.
Thanks Chris, I'm sure this video will be invaluable to those trying out Linux in the coming year! Also, thought you might be interested to know that we have a fantastic Computing Museum over here in Derby. It might possibly make for good content in a field trip video?
Well done AGAIN Chris, entertainingly presented at exactly the right level AGAIN for me and I'm sure others. I've tried Linux a few times over the last 25+ years but always came back to Windows, but with Mint 22 and your expert guidance I'm quite confident the next move will be permanent (well including wine ..). My one disappointment is that "Boulder Dash" doesn't seem to be still available. Really appreciate your excellent work Chris.
Great explanation of the storage devices in Linux! Been using Linux since the early late 90's when I would have to compile the kernel to get my modem to work and couldn't have done as good a job going through all the naming schemes Linux has for devices.
more on this subject please. 1. setting up and creating permanent mount point and permissions. 2. access mounted drives from other devices (Windows, Linux, Apple, etc.). 3. accessing other devices (NAS drives, Windows computers, etc. as permanent mounts) ... local network accessibility. This would be very helpful.
Recently stumbled across my old aluminium MacBook from 2009 while rummaging through the attic. Decided to pop in an SSD and a new battery (amazing that that is still available, although third party ofcourse). I installed LM Cinnamon 21.3. With that version and kernel all functions work well, like screen brightness and so. It is a very well usable machine again with this new, up-to-date software (couldn't do that with MacOS ;-) ) Anyway, there I am! And it is all because I became a member of this channel and you taught me this! Thank you very much for your magnificent lessons. You really know how to explain complicated things and make them accessible to everyone. Greetings from a Dutch fan!
Linux seems difficult cause it's different than Windows. After you'll learn the basics you won't be able to imagine switching back to Leash... i mean Windows again. Don't let people scare you. Linux is easy just give it some effort and you will be happy you did. Like me! :)
I switched to linux in 1996 or 1997, I can't remember precisely when, but it was pretty primitive then. Fortunately, I knew people who were familiar with linux to guide me. Your guides serve that purpose very well.
"If you don't know exactly what you're doing, be very careful indeed when using Disks...." I'm happy to accept that advice! Actually, after fooling around with (and using, to some degree) Linux for about 3 years, I've absorbed very little about Linex file system, partitions, etc. I know what to do when, say, wanting to install a distro in a partition I create...but NOT because I actually grasp it but, rather, because I've simply learned the steps. I've decided that, for me, trying to understand Linux drives and partitions is about as hopeless as my trying to understand the Circle of Fifths! 😑
Very timely! My computer updated and decided to have no icons so I'm trying to move back over to Linux. Videos are great as always Christopher thank you!
That is one of the best explanations of the typical Linux drive and directory system that I have seen. Very clear, and nice that you didn't just dumb things down and breeze right past block storage devices like most "explainers". And yeah "disks" is very nice. I use it instead of dd whenever I can, because it is so convenient and intuitive. To use dd you have to always be reading the man file or the help file or remember a few dozen options, and they don't call it "disk destroyer" for nothing. dd is crazy powerful but disks will do nearly any disk mangement task you would ever need. Four suggestions for future videos: Low level incremental backup with a shell script that calls rsync. Dead easy once you have the script set up, and you can even let it run automatically with cron though myself I prefer to initiate it manually. Most backup utilities make too many decisions "for your own good, you simple minded user, you" and don't back up stuff you actually should back up, and waste space backing up stuff you probably already have on another drive anyway, such as movies or music. Plus you can do incremental backups instead of full or selective backups, so daily backups don't fill up a 4TB USB drive every third or 4th day. This to me is the ultimate backup system. Yeah I do a daily backup. It's the right thing to do. Initial partition setup for a first time Linux installer. The default in many distros is to put everything on one big partition. At the very least, the new Linux user should right away be in the habit of creating a separate partition for /home so he can do a system delete and re-install and not lose all his personal files. An explanation of the terminal. I differ with you on this, you really can't use linux to its full potential without using terminal. More important than trying to list every single command or operator, would be listing a few ways to get help and solve a problem as it happens instead of trying to already know everything before something happens or needs to be done. However, a good explanation of the use of python in the terminal would be nice. I always have a terminal window open in the python envorinment, and I always have the math library imported. It is like the world's best calculator. I forgot the fourth one already but I know you will think of it. A few years ago, only the called, the chosen, the zealots went around telling people that they MUST move to a grownup operating system. It was a way for the fringe kooks to validate their own choices, and engage in a bit of elitism. Now, with WinDOHs getting suckier and suckier, regular folks are suggesting a move to a fairly user friendly distro like Ubuntu, Mint, or their daddy, Debian. Again, well done, nice video.
I teach an "Introduction to Linux" course, and this is obviously an early topic in it. You've made it nicely clear, (and taught me where the identifiers originated). Follow-up topics might include what the standard directory hierarchy looks like, why your home directory should be on a separate partition, and perhaps a quick word on the Unix' roots of the controller identifiers. Even if you never have to take any practical actions on them, it's good to understand the "Technological Cheshire Cats" in any system or device you use.
Organization of storage devics in Linux might be confusing at the first glance, but when you understand it, managing storage devices inLlinux is much more clear and easier than in Windows.
This is great stuff and warrats a few views to absorb it all. Tinkering with Mint, so this has cleared up a lot of potential confusion without me having to do lots of reading. Looking forward to the drives/devices etc outing.
Exciting option. (My main OS is Linux mint 22.) I recently helped a friend install linux mint 21.3 into his Mac 2009 laptop. His laptop hasn't been able to update the apple OS for many years and he has felt the pressure to buy a brand new apple laptop. He has felt that apple is too proprietary anyway and wanted a complete switch. His main interests are programming and music. His laptop runs very well now with linux and although the video must run at 720p (but very smoothly) in every other way his laptop feels like a brand new machine. Codeblocks runs excellently and rythumbox has replaced iTunes. Thus he has kept his machine from the landfill.
Thanks Chris for your easy to follow Linux storage systems. It makes me wish they had Linux computer classes down at my local community college. Good to see a shout out for Stanley the knife and Mr Scissors…👍😀! Have a great week!
When I switched from OS/2 Warp 4.5 to Mandrake Linux I was a bit confused at first but soon got used to the drive layout. I could never go back to the MS-DOS file system format! Now a C: drive is a trip to the beach! 🤣 I'm also used to having a minimum of the partitions on my boot drive, I always put /home on a separate partition, it makes reinstalling much easier.
The basics, so important! I always get something new from your excellent videos. Partitons ( ;-) cf 7'13") are such a vital part of computer use. I very much look forward to the follow-up on drives-disks-volumes.
Thank you, Chris! Exactly the primer I need, to demystify that particular piece of Linux. As a long-time Windows user looking to switch some of my computing to Linux, while this helps, it also highlights one of the areas in which Windows is superior to Linux for the non-geek computer user.
In recent years I have noticed more and more Windows users switching to Linux and the opinion is that this will not change which makes me happier and I believe that Microsoft's days are numbered. LINUX in my opinion is freedom and happiness regardless of the distribution used. Thanks for another great video.
After experimenting with Windows and Linux distro-hopping finaly i found peace in macOS, iOS. But i still watch this channel for about some news like Raspberry Pi, ssds, Flash drives etc. Only Rpi5 home server/router keeps me to keep eye on those Linux news. Thanks for video
Thank you for this. It greatly assists in my present transition from WIN10 to Mint. Please add a video on the use of DD command and/or the use of a "rescue" USB and a further video on Syncthing or similar program to migrate data from a WIN10 device to a Linux device. Every time I hit a problem EC delivers a video which explains the predicament with great clarity. Thank you for all of your work. Greatly appreciated.
Very nice overview of the Linux filesystems and device management -- hopefully this works to clarify for Windows users Linux's somewhat more advanced method of dealing with storage!
Once I started learning about the file structure and navigating in terminal linux started making more sense. Im still a noob but this should be required knowledge before booting imo. I also stumbled through arch installed and making partitions and mounting them made things much easier to map in my head
This is awesome thank you, sir. Explainsa lot. I’ve been “making the switch”… slowly. I’m still using W10 but my strategy has been to replace most of the Microsoft programs I use with FOSS or cross platform programs; many of which, are native to many a Linux distro.
@@Praxibetel-Ix Morning Ford I hope that all is well with you over the pond, we're getting battered by storm 'Bert' at the moment I'm just glad to be indoors ;)
@alanthornton3530 Aw, man, I hope you and everyone else over there stays safe! It's bright, sunny, and cold this morning where I live. EDIT: I forgot to say that I'm doing just fine. Thanks! :3
On the day in 2014 that MS stopped supporting Windows XP, I switched over to Ubuntu 12. Haven't looked back since, and now on Ubuntu 24.04. Even though things are done differently in the two OS families, practically speaking this has never been a problem. And I certainly have far less understanding and experience than Chris. I'm just a normal user who surfs the Internet, email, UA-cam, etc. And I'm 74.
Yes I feel people are getting frustrated with Microsoft and it's Windows platform, it's like they don't care anymore. Linux is not really user friendly though in some ways, so thanks for this explanation, it cleared up a few things for me. I've dabbled in Linux and now macOS which is also a Unix based OS. The Apple base model M4 Mini really threw the cat amongst the pigeons in my eyes for £599. Another OS to watch, especially with their compatibility with Windows using conversion layers.
Thank you for this video it has really helped me! I am planing on switching to Linux when Windows 10 support ends. I have always used Windows and have no experience with Linux. I've watched you video on ZorinOS and I am planing to switch to that. Thanks again....I only have a few months left to learn everything :)
What happened to editing the FSTAB to make drives permanent? Do we still do that? It was a long time ago that I built my Linux PC, Mint 17.3 I think it was, and I added drives as I got them. There are two permanently resident in the machine, but as they are already there when I install a new distro, they seem to just get added. As a side note, they are both identical drives, make, model, and capacity, yet they both look very different in Disks or Gparted. Clearly I have initialised and formatted them differently, but as they work and have data on them, I have never played with them to find out what it was that I messed up. 😆
This is the perfect explainer video for this topic, well laid out and easy to follow. It makes me think how I actually prefer the way Linux handles this, especially for how it communicates to the user in the GUI. I never liked the drive letter thing Windows did it can lead to confusion with less knowledgeable users especially if they try and set up shortcuts to files on external drives etc and the drive letter changed because of plugging in a usb disk or whatever. That said it's a bit more involved to make drives automount at startup in Linux.
Thank you for posting magnified screenshots / videos clips in your production. Too many contributors simply record their full-hd screens that are showing text in tiny 10pt font and expect it to be comprehensible by the viewer.
This is a useful terminology introduction for devices with media in place. Another video for removable media drives, and how to use them interactively would be appreciated. I'm thinking about terminal commands to do things, but GUIs are good, too.
Wow! This is excellent. I've been using Windows since about 1957 and assumed that Linux had the same type of file system. But a little different and always confusing somehow with extraneous and silly stuff added.
Luckily I learned Unix before being indoctrinated into the world of DOS/Windows, so this was old hat for me, but always a welcome refresher of the basics. I've mostly stuck to the command line for system interaction, so I was glad you showed the GUI versions.
Nice video. The "Disks" graphical utility is a Gnome app. If you have KDE or some other desktop installed, you probably won't see the "Disks" app. You can use KDE Partition Manager, but it is more advanced and is similar to GParted from Gnome. I noticed you don't have a swap partition. I assume you have something else to do swapping. I prefer ZFS because it robust and has features like native encryption, snapshots, and deduplication (don't ever use that!).
Chris this was still a nice watch even if I know most of what you mentioned. The 'sr' prefixed devices for optical drives is something I've never noticed due to not having a optical drive in my computers, but nice to learn. Among the partition related stuff on Linux, the separated /home style of partitioning is something I am not used to since Mint and a lot of distros have everything in a single partition (or two is swap is separate) at root (/) instead of having to decide how big each partition should be.
I also haven't see 'mmcblk' mounted devices since my card reader is USB based and mounts my memory card much like flash drives so they get an 'sdx' naming. Not sure if internal memory card readers that don't use USB, but instead PCIE or another bus would display that 'mmcblk' device. (I'll have to test that on my laptop when I get the opportunity.)
You made a 73 yr old happy as just what the commenters said you explained slow and carefully and the screenshot where big enough for me to read. I replayed multiple times and then ran my own file explorer and I could see what you meant. Most other tutorials are filled with unexplained acronyms , but you took pity on me and told me what each acronym meant, thank you so much. I am looking forward to the next extension to this video. Give my regards to Stanly and Mr. Scissors.
Thanks for this. :)
I just switched over to Linux, specifically Ubuntu, about 3 to 4 months ago. I definitely have no plans of going back to Windows. Regarding the topic discussed in this video, I was not very clear about it until now. All the information was explained in a very nice and easy-to-understand way, and I've decided to watch it a few more times to properly absorb the content. I'm really grateful for your efforts and very happy to have come across your channel. Keep up the good work!
I've also recently made the switch. This video provides a great foundation to understand what the commands used to set things up are doing and why you are using them. I think that deeper level of understanding overlooked by most tutorials is a huge help in getting to the next level of understand where you can do things without having to follow a guide.
Personally, sense the end of support for windows 10, I've switched over to linux. I considered using something more complex like arch, but having limited experience with it figured I'd start with Ubuntu as well. Now's a great time for it as they've just recently released their LTS 24.04.1 version. Perhaps I'll switch over to something that offers greater control in the future when I'm more comfortable with the environment.
I didn't want to make a complete break from windows so I still have my old windows boot drive installed and I can still boot to it, but I haven't found the need. My AMD CPU doesn't have integrated graphics, but I do have two GPUs installed, so I set one up for PCI passthrough and spun up some VMs. I'm actually writing this comment from a Windows 10 VM running on my linux machine. It's not quite as seamless as running windows on bare metal, but it works alright.
It took a whole weekend to get that all up and running the way I liked. Passing through my USB headset, sharing my keyboard and mouse with Evdev, sharing directories between the host and VM. Now that I have this setup there are so many other things to try.
I've also set up a bridge connection so that I can access my VMs from my LAN. That has opened up a whole new world of networking options. I set up a shared drive with samba and configured the firewall to allow connections through with UFW. Now I can easily move files to and from my computer from my phone or any other device on the network. I set up RDP on my host so that I can remote in from the guest or from anything on the network with a client. I'll have to switch to a Windows 10 pro version from home to be able to remote into it, but with it being a virtual machine I don't even have to take my computer out of commission to do that.
I'm currently setting up a raid 5 array with three of my 6tb iron wolf pro HDDs. This way even if one of my hard drives fail I won't lose my files. And with the built in write-intent bitmap, enabled by default, prevents write holes, so even if the system crashes midwrite the array isn't corrupted.
The next step will be setting up an openVPN server with DynamicDNS. This way I'll be able to connect to my local network from anywhere despite having a dynamic IP. It's been so much fun learning how to set all of this stuff up and that's all in the first week. It has really inspired me to push harder to expand the depth and breadth of my knowledge. Now I have all sorts of project ideas.
I'd like to switch from my TPLink router either to ubiquiti or mikrotik router then set up some VLANs. I'd love to be able to run some cheap IoT devices without neccicarily giving them access to everything on the network or even internet access. I don't have a smart TV, but if I did I wouldn't want it dialing home. I think I might switch to a PFSense router/firewall at some point, but I'd still need a wireless access point and I want to move away from TPLink. I trust TPLink about as much as I trust Lenovo or Huawei.
I'm even thinking about trying some security stuff. I took a SANS course on security a few years back. While I enjoyed it I don't think I've really retained much of it because there's hardly a need for me to run stuff like metasploit or sqlmap. I've always been curious about how one could exploit a bufferoverflow to actually execute something. Even with a gigantic NOPsled you'd think with address space layout randomization it'd be impossible to get the program counter to land on your shellcode. Maybe I can write something to make that happen.
I recently heard about some vulnerabilities in the vector instructions of some of XuanTie's RISC V cpus. I don't have a c910 or c920, but I've got a c908, so I can't do that actual ghostwrite vulnerability, but maybe I can figure out something to do the one impacting the chip I've got. There's probably a proof of concept on github I can use.
I've spent so much time writing boring .net webapps and just generally being trapped by Windows. I feel so much better having broadened my horizons.
Same here. I still have windows for my CompTIA certs, but Ubuntu is my daily driver
Try fedora now
I have found that Ubuntu 24.04, and all it's variants, to be very buggy. When 22.04 was running, it was perfect, but now they made it into a train wreck. I stick with Debian 12 these days.
@@rootcanal7188 Ubuntu has been slowly going to the "dark side", I'm afraid. They insist on their own "snap" package format, and it really isn't ready for prime time.
Apps start too slow, the sandboxing gets in the way all the time (like trying to use "open with..." from the file explorer often just doesn't work at all), it creates this weird "loopback" file systems that are messy cluttering up your file system view (doing "lsblk" on Ubuntu with a load of snaps installed, lists a false "block device" for every single snap - it's really annoying when you're trying to sort out your actual disks to have all this bullshit cluttering up the listing).
And, on the philosophical side, though "snap" is open source, no-one else uses it. Not technically proprietary, but it might as well be.
Ubuntu had gone down the "dark side" before. Where everyone else was going to move to Wayland to replace the aging X window system, Canonical (makers of Ubuntu) decided to make their own one. Why? Don't know. When it didn't go anywhere and no-one was following suit, they eventually gave up on it.
Ubuntu used to be the distro that was recommended. But, these days, I'd say it's Linux Mint. Linux Mint is actually derived from Ubuntu - but it was forked away from Ubuntu by people who really didn't agree with where Canonical was going.
Yeah, Ubuntu is getting worse. I'm on Ubuntu 22.04, just because I started with Ubuntu back in the day and have kept going with it. But I'm resisting 24.04, though it keeps reminding me to upgrade, and 'm tempted to jump to Linux Mint instead. Or maybe Debian itself (the distro they all derive from).
Long time user... never really understood the mounting designations and didn't really care but this video cleared up a lot of things for me. Thank you so much.
Same here, I've been running Linux since '02.
When I first used Linux, this used to confuse me, but it just becomes easy once you get over the obsession with drive letters C: you!
Very true. Indeed I now find drive information in Linux easier to understand than Windows as the information is laid out plainly in front of you with only one terminal command.
It's also a lot more flexible as a result. Having a storage drive that I dedicate to my media server mounted inside my home directory's video folder is so much more convenient than having to build an entirely new directory structure under a different drive letter
@@seto007 You can mount drives to folders on Windows for I don't know, like 20 years? There's no need to use drive letters at all. You can even mount UNC paths (network shares) to folders and present them like regular folders on your regular local drive. Windows is very flexible in this regard, much more than Linux is. I would love to see Linux handling network / UNC paths like this, unfortunately it does not. It also does not allow me to mount anything in some kind of "This PC" view, which is what the drive letter abstraction makes possible.
All in all, flexibility is on the Windows side of things, if you know your business.
EDIT: No need for drive letters is what I said, that's true, but you need C:\ at least for Windows itself, but you still can mount C:\ to any folder as well.
Videos about Linux are always welcome!
They sure are :D
Thanks for your support, most appreciated.
@@ExplainingComputers Hi, do you find Ubuntu 24.04 to be buggy? I found 24.04 and ALL variants to be so buggy as to be unusable. Am I doing something wrong, or should I just stick with Debian 12? Thanks.
@@rootcanal7188 Just my two cents. Stick with the distro that works for you. From my limited experience, some distros work on particular hardware better than others. I like Mint but it doesn't like my laptop, was a bit 'buggy', so I switched to Ubuntu, which seems to work better. No OS is free from 'bugs', if your system is working well then do regular 'Timeshift' system backups [on external drive] of it to restore to, if in the future you get a spanner in the works.
I can't believe how much I learned here after so many years using Linux. You're a great teacher, Chris. Thank you!
Blessed Sunday greetings all!
Hi!
@@Praxibetel-Ix Hello from the other end of the universe!
Back at U!
Greetings!
To you as well :)
Just installed Kubuntu on my Nintendo Switch. First time I use Linux, so now I have to learn all about it!
WHOA, that sounds really far out! How did you manage to install Kubuntu on your Switch?
Good luck with Linux.
Nintendo would like a word with you in private.
@@Praxibetel-Ix They probably used switchroot, just google it. I currently use the Ubuntu variant and it is quite usable. HD youtube playback works and general web browsing is good. All the drivers work perfectly, including GPU, sound, USB, networking, bluetooth, and even the joycons. You can even dock the switch to an external monitor and use it as a mini PC. A really good project if you need a spare HTPC (that is what I used mine for before getting a MacBook).
@@km-electronics1 Too bad all the switch models can be mod-chipped
As someone who made the switch to Linux years ago I think this series is awesome!
FYI: All Unix-like operating systems such as BSD and even MacOS largely function as described in this video. Windows with its legacy drive letters, is the outlier.
"and even MacOS"
When the disk drive on my Windows laptop broke, I revived it with Linux Mint on a USB stick. Then I discovered I didn't even need Windows and have been using Linux full time ever since. Linux will only improve and the days of Windows are numbered. Thanks for the helpful videos!
Switched to Mint around the beginning of this year. Haven't looked back & don't miss Windows at all.
I started using Mint around the start of the year myself! Alas, I still have to use Windows for a couple certain things but for everything else? Linux all the way!
@@Praxibetel-Ix Apart from Photoshop that I used to use EVERY day, (seriously, I used to have it load on start up!) I don't miss Windows. I can still Wine Photoshop if I'm desperate, but I no longer need Adobe. For artwork, especially since the rise of A.I. I have abandoned digital art & am returning to traditional media. Which is a kick in the guts for me as I always loved digital artwork & what it could produce.
I really appreciate the way you present content! SLOW, clear, and articulate!!! Some UA-camrs speak SO fast, I can't understand them, and have to playback at reduced speed. So, THANK YOU!
This video came at the perfect time for me. I knew I wasn't upgrading to Win11 with all its built-in privacy issues, but a couple weeks ago my Win10 was giving me problems and I got fed up and chucked it. I'm now 100% on Linux Mint Mate. I'm over 60, and if this old man can do it then so can you. Stop letting Microsoft mine your personal data.
I've just been playing with Win11, I can see many people switching to linux!
I like the link you made there!
I liked this video a lot. I keep my home directory on a seperate hard drive. This is absolute paradise. All of my personal files are in home, and all of my software and data are all in flatpaks also in my home sirectory.
Solid tactics for distro-hopping and easy recovery if your OS is destroyed.
There also was a designation hda, hdb etc used for those old PATA/IDE drives. My first computer (which ran Linux) had one of those as its boot drive.
This video is very helpful. Recently switched one of my Windows 10 laptops over to Ubuntu 24.04 and I’m impressed with it. This video answered a few questions I was curious about. As always, looking forward to your next video!
Greetings Perry! :)
@@ExplainingComputersalways an honor to be greeted by you. Wishing you a great day!
Sunday morning coffee and Linux partitions; perfect! 👍
It is quite obvious that your calling in life is to be a teacher. Everything was wonderfully explained and though I knew most of the things, I still found value in watching your whole video. Thank you for everything you've uploaded over the years. I still remember buying my first SSD to switch out my wife's slow hard drive years ago and landing on one of your videos where you showed me how to create an image of the disk and write it to the smaller SSD.
Never let programmers specify a user interface, lest sometimes things start enumerating with 0 while at other times things start enumerating with 1.
A wise comment.
I'm glad I was the 1st to comment on this 😁
I can deal with that start counting from 0 vs 1, but what I find really frustrating on Linux is the fact, that these device ids or numbers change, if you add / remove devices. /dev/sda is "sda", even though it is connected to the second SATA port. If you connect something to the first SATA port, "sda" becomes "sdb" and you have a new "sda", what are the Linux developers smokling? The same happens for network card interfaces if you add / remove them, which screws up the machine, just like the enumeration changes if you add any drive .
It's bad, you can like Linux how much you want, this is just bad. Not booting into the OS if one of the drives referenced in fstab is missing is also bad, at least if there is no option to just ignore missing devices and keep booting into a working system. A Linux desktop is like lipstick on a pig.. oink oink! o))
@@Jeff121456 You mean the 0th?
Thank you, again, sir. Added to my 'give to linux newbies' list of system explanations. You have a great way of explaining things like this.
You provide a great resource. So useful to those of us that could never work this out for ourselves, but are capable of grasping the technical details when explained by someone who explains things so well. You are a gifted teacher.
Brand new Ubuntu user (installed on Thursday). As always, Chris, you explain your topic completely and clearly for the novice (or even some experienced users). I'm going to rush to your terminal video. Can't wait for your new video on this subject. Thanks Chris!
I’m a noob too; Ubuntu for the last 3-4 months. Welcome to the club!
As Johnny Carson once said".....I......I did not know that". That's explaining computers! Thanks Chris. I'm gonna have to watch that again.
Excellent stuff once again. Clear and concise.
Very nice. This may help adopters to easily do their first steps in LINUX.
Thanks Chris for an excellent & well explained video. Coming from Windows to Linux it does take a bit of time getting used to, the way drives & partitions are marked out, I always take notes as I find this helps make sense of things.
I occasionally use ‘Disks', my go to is 'Gparted', for adding, partitioning, resizing drives or changing a file system. This can be downloaded from the ‘Software Manager’ if it’s not already installed on your distro.
Thanks for your support. :)
Hi, Alan! :D
@@ExplainingComputers For the tea & biccie fund :)
Relatively new Linux user here, driven away from Windows 11 by Microsoft. I love your educational videos and refer back to them as I need to for years after you make them. This is another gem.
While working at Free Geek here in Toronto (A social enterprise refurbishing and redeploying computers to low-income clients and other social agencies.) We developed a standard installation procedure for desktops and laptops for Linux. As part of that we partitioned the drives so that there was a partition for the OS and temp files and then there was a second partition for user data. That way if the clients messed up their system, we could quickly restore it and their data was kept safe.
I just checked out your website, very impressive focus and values! We have a similar service in Kitchener, dealing with the same demographic. We also have an organization, with a much larger mandate, including refurbishing bicycles, etc.
@ I’m actually looking for someone to help me get a small server (hp DL G9) up and running g with Ubuntu server and update its firmware ( I have the firmware image). Then configure it as a home lab. I had RHEL developers edition but have been locked out since the licence expired.
Looking forward to your next video.
Thanks! Big things going on here next Sunday . . .
Excellent video, enjoyed it a lot. I learned quite a bit....
This could be a series. You could probably cover a whole lot of topics on this....
Thank you for your time;
Monte
Thanks for this. I may indeed make some more "Switching to Linux: #####" videos. :)
Thank you Chris. As always, you did an excellent job of explaining followed up with examples. What surprised me the most was the Disks application. The mount/unmount button and gear icon. Very exciting and will be helpful for me going forward. Cheers.
Thanks Chris, I'm sure this video will be invaluable to those trying out Linux in the coming year! Also, thought you might be interested to know that we have a fantastic Computing Museum over here in Derby. It might possibly make for good content in a field trip video?
Well done AGAIN Chris, entertainingly presented at exactly the right level AGAIN for me and I'm sure others. I've tried Linux a few times over the last 25+ years but always came back to Windows, but with Mint 22 and your expert guidance I'm quite confident the next move will be permanent (well including wine ..). My one disappointment is that "Boulder Dash" doesn't seem to be still available. Really appreciate your excellent work Chris.
This would be a great addition to your "Linux Survival Guide" playlist. It's a gem of a series!
Thanks for the video Chris, you provided a very clear explanation for folks new to this. 30 year Linux veteran here. 👍
This video was very good. Well organized and very well presented. Thank you!
Great explanation of the storage devices in Linux! Been using Linux since the early late 90's when I would have to compile the kernel to get my modem to work and couldn't have done as good a job going through all the naming schemes Linux has for devices.
more on this subject please. 1. setting up and creating permanent mount point and permissions. 2. access mounted drives from other devices (Windows, Linux, Apple, etc.). 3. accessing other devices (NAS drives, Windows computers, etc. as permanent mounts) ... local network accessibility. This would be very helpful.
Recently stumbled across my old aluminium MacBook from 2009 while rummaging through the attic. Decided to pop in an SSD and a new battery (amazing that that is still available, although third party ofcourse). I installed LM Cinnamon 21.3. With that version and kernel all functions work well, like screen brightness and so. It is a very well usable machine again with this new, up-to-date software (couldn't do that with MacOS ;-) ) Anyway, there I am! And it is all because I became a member of this channel and you taught me this! Thank you very much for your magnificent lessons. You really know how to explain complicated things and make them accessible to everyone. Greetings from a Dutch fan!
Linux seems difficult cause it's different than Windows. After you'll learn the basics you won't be able to imagine switching back to Leash... i mean Windows again. Don't let people scare you. Linux is easy just give it some effort and you will be happy you did. Like me! :)
Well said.
I did go back to Windows! I would not rule out running Linux on some older hardware which are not being used, or underused.
I switched to linux in 1996 or 1997, I can't remember precisely when, but it was pretty primitive then. Fortunately, I knew people who were familiar with linux to guide me. Your guides serve that purpose very well.
Great explanation on storage!….turned on a “EUREKA” MOMENT FOR ME!!!
Thanks Chris!
Thanks for this very helpful video Chris. As usual your clear descriptions and explanations of how things work have been a huge help.
"If you don't know exactly what you're doing, be very careful indeed when using Disks...." I'm happy to accept that advice!
Actually, after fooling around with (and using, to some degree) Linux for about 3 years, I've absorbed very little about Linex file system, partitions, etc. I know what to do when, say, wanting to install a distro in a partition I create...but NOT because I actually grasp it but, rather, because I've simply learned the steps. I've decided that, for me, trying to understand Linux drives and partitions is about as hopeless as my trying to understand the Circle of Fifths! 😑
Very timely! My computer updated and decided to have no icons so I'm trying to move back over to Linux. Videos are great as always Christopher thank you!
That is one of the best explanations of the typical Linux drive and directory system that I have seen. Very clear, and nice that you didn't just dumb things down and breeze right past block storage devices like most "explainers". And yeah "disks" is very nice. I use it instead of dd whenever I can, because it is so convenient and intuitive. To use dd you have to always be reading the man file or the help file or remember a few dozen options, and they don't call it "disk destroyer" for nothing. dd is crazy powerful but disks will do nearly any disk mangement task you would ever need.
Four suggestions for future videos:
Low level incremental backup with a shell script that calls rsync. Dead easy once you have the script set up, and you can even let it run automatically with cron though myself I prefer to initiate it manually. Most backup utilities make too many decisions "for your own good, you simple minded user, you" and don't back up stuff you actually should back up, and waste space backing up stuff you probably already have on another drive anyway, such as movies or music. Plus you can do incremental backups instead of full or selective backups, so daily backups don't fill up a 4TB USB drive every third or 4th day. This to me is the ultimate backup system. Yeah I do a daily backup. It's the right thing to do.
Initial partition setup for a first time Linux installer. The default in many distros is to put everything on one big partition. At the very least, the new Linux user should right away be in the habit of creating a separate partition for /home so he can do a system delete and re-install and not lose all his personal files.
An explanation of the terminal. I differ with you on this, you really can't use linux to its full potential without using terminal. More important than trying to list every single command or operator, would be listing a few ways to get help and solve a problem as it happens instead of trying to already know everything before something happens or needs to be done. However, a good explanation of the use of python in the terminal would be nice. I always have a terminal window open in the python envorinment, and I always have the math library imported. It is like the world's best calculator.
I forgot the fourth one already but I know you will think of it.
A few years ago, only the called, the chosen, the zealots went around telling people that they MUST move to a grownup operating system. It was a way for the fringe kooks to validate their own choices, and engage in a bit of elitism. Now, with WinDOHs getting suckier and suckier, regular folks are suggesting a move to a fairly user friendly distro like Ubuntu, Mint, or their daddy, Debian.
Again, well done, nice video.
This will help the next time I put WINE onto a Linux distro and try audio ripping through WINE, I hope. Good job!
I installed Exact Audio Copy using Wine and it worked like a charm for me.
@@Praxibetel-Ix Using DbPowerAMP Audio CD Ripper here. Guess I should check EAC too.
@@Praxibetel-Ix I explored EAC this week, and it felt like I had regressed to the 20th century.
Why using wine and a windows app ? Install asunder, that will also do the job just fine.
I teach an "Introduction to Linux" course, and this is obviously an early topic in it. You've made it nicely clear, (and taught me where the identifiers originated).
Follow-up topics might include what the standard directory hierarchy looks like, why your home directory should be on a separate partition, and perhaps a quick word on the Unix' roots of the controller identifiers. Even if you never have to take any practical actions on them, it's good to understand the "Technological Cheshire Cats" in any system or device you use.
Great explanation, Chris. Thanks. Always good to have a better understanding of the building blocks of our OS.
10:00 Sir, you are doing an excellent job of explaining this. But goodness! One can't blame Windows users for finding Linux files system inscrutable.
This specific content and this channel is priceless. Thank you.
I remember switching from Amiga to Linux back in the late 90s. I could have used these videos back then. :) It's a nice refresher though.
Organization of storage devics in Linux might be confusing at the first glance, but when you understand it, managing storage devices inLlinux is much more clear and easier than in Windows.
This is great stuff and warrats a few views to absorb it all. Tinkering with Mint, so this has cleared up a lot of potential confusion without me having to do lots of reading. Looking forward to the drives/devices etc outing.
Exciting option. (My main OS is Linux mint 22.) I recently helped a friend install linux mint 21.3 into his Mac 2009 laptop. His laptop hasn't been able to update the apple OS for many years and he has felt the pressure to buy a brand new apple laptop. He has felt that apple is too proprietary anyway and wanted a complete switch. His main interests are programming and music. His laptop runs very well now with linux and although the video must run at 720p (but very smoothly) in every other way his laptop feels like a brand new machine. Codeblocks runs excellently and rythumbox has replaced iTunes. Thus he has kept his machine from the landfill.
Thanks Chris for your easy to follow Linux storage systems. It makes me wish they had Linux computer classes down at my local community college.
Good to see a shout out for Stanley the knife and Mr Scissors…👍😀!
Have a great week!
When I switched from OS/2 Warp 4.5 to Mandrake Linux I was a bit confused at first but soon got used to the drive layout. I could never go back to the MS-DOS file system format! Now a C: drive is a trip to the beach! 🤣 I'm also used to having a minimum of the partitions on my boot drive, I always put /home on a separate partition, it makes reinstalling much easier.
Love the c: drive line! :)
Great video as usual Chris! I think we'll be seeing many more people switch to Linux soon.
Thank you for the easy to understand Linux drive information.
Sunday greetings.
Once again, it's the best tutorial video by learned Christopher B.
The basics, so important! I always get something new from your excellent videos. Partitons ( ;-) cf 7'13") are such a vital part of computer use. I very much look forward to the follow-up on drives-disks-volumes.
Good Morning from Arizona.
Good morning from, well, my chair!
Greetings from the UK!
Thank you, Chris! Exactly the primer I need, to demystify that particular piece of Linux.
As a long-time Windows user looking to switch some of my computing to Linux, while this helps, it also highlights one of the areas in which Windows is superior to Linux for the non-geek computer user.
Really clear explanation. My students would likely wrap their heads around this than some of the formal training materials I have access to.
In recent years I have noticed more and more Windows users switching to Linux and the opinion is that this will not change which makes me happier and I believe that Microsoft's days are numbered. LINUX in my opinion is freedom and happiness regardless of the distribution used. Thanks for another great video.
Thats good, but unfortuantely, macOS is starting to have a decline in users. I like macOS and Linux equally, so I hope both gain more users.
After experimenting with Windows and Linux distro-hopping finaly i found peace in macOS, iOS. But i still watch this channel for about some news like Raspberry Pi, ssds, Flash drives etc. Only Rpi5 home server/router keeps me to keep eye on those Linux news. Thanks for video
Thank you for this. It greatly assists in my present transition from WIN10 to Mint. Please add a video on the use of DD command and/or the use of a "rescue" USB and a further video on Syncthing or similar program to migrate data from a WIN10 device to a Linux device. Every time I hit a problem EC delivers a video which explains the predicament with great clarity. Thank you for all of your work. Greatly appreciated.
It is so interesting that all of these things are Flat in my mind, objects in the GUI, but flat, text based and very simple.....THX
Very nice overview of the Linux filesystems and device management -- hopefully this works to clarify for Windows users Linux's somewhat more advanced method of dealing with storage!
This series is such a great idea!
I dislike the Microsoft strategy with Windows 11.
All you need is Linux Mint, Wine, and Proton.
Looking forward for the next video
Once I started learning about the file structure and navigating in terminal linux started making more sense. Im still a noob but this should be required knowledge before booting imo. I also stumbled through arch installed and making partitions and mounting them made things much easier to map in my head
This is awesome thank you, sir. Explainsa lot. I’ve been “making the switch”… slowly. I’m still using W10 but my strategy has been to replace most of the Microsoft programs I use with FOSS or cross platform programs; many of which, are native to many a Linux distro.
I already know these things but I don't mind being reminded. Switching to Linux is essential!
WOOOO HOOOOO!!! LINUX!!! 🐧❤️
Also, a contribution to the tea fund. Good morning/afternoon! :)
Thanks for your support! :)
@@ExplainingComputers You're welcome! I'm always happy to help. :)
@@Praxibetel-Ix Morning Ford I hope that all is well with you over the pond, we're getting battered by storm 'Bert' at the moment I'm just glad to be indoors ;)
@alanthornton3530 Aw, man, I hope you and everyone else over there stays safe! It's bright, sunny, and cold this morning where I live.
EDIT: I forgot to say that I'm doing just fine. Thanks! :3
On the day in 2014 that MS stopped supporting Windows XP, I switched over to Ubuntu 12. Haven't looked back since, and now on Ubuntu 24.04. Even though things are done differently in the two OS families, practically speaking this has never been a problem. And I certainly have far less understanding and experience than Chris. I'm just a normal user who surfs the Internet, email, UA-cam, etc. And I'm 74.
Yes I feel people are getting frustrated with Microsoft and it's Windows platform, it's like they don't care anymore. Linux is not really user friendly though in some ways, so thanks for this explanation, it cleared up a few things for me. I've dabbled in Linux and now macOS which is also a Unix based OS. The Apple base model M4 Mini really threw the cat amongst the pigeons in my eyes for £599. Another OS to watch, especially with their compatibility with Windows using conversion layers.
Thank you for this video it has really helped me! I am planing on switching to Linux when Windows 10 support ends. I have always used Windows and have no experience with Linux. I've watched you video on ZorinOS and I am planing to switch to that. Thanks again....I only have a few months left to learn everything :)
Good luck! Zorin OS is a great distro to transition to.
fun sunday , great video !!
What happened to editing the FSTAB to make drives permanent? Do we still do that?
It was a long time ago that I built my Linux PC, Mint 17.3 I think it was, and I added drives as I got them. There are two permanently resident in the machine, but as they are already there when I install a new distro, they seem to just get added.
As a side note, they are both identical drives, make, model, and capacity, yet they both look very different in Disks or Gparted. Clearly I have initialised and formatted them differently, but as they work and have data on them, I have never played with them to find out what it was that I messed up. 😆
This is the perfect explainer video for this topic, well laid out and easy to follow. It makes me think how I actually prefer the way Linux handles this, especially for how it communicates to the user in the GUI. I never liked the drive letter thing Windows did it can lead to confusion with less knowledgeable users especially if they try and set up shortcuts to files on external drives etc and the drive letter changed because of plugging in a usb disk or whatever. That said it's a bit more involved to make drives automount at startup in Linux.
Thank you for posting magnified screenshots / videos clips in your production. Too many contributors simply record their full-hd screens that are showing text in tiny 10pt font and expect it to be comprehensible by the viewer.
Long time Linux user but I’m still learning thanks Chris :)
This is a useful terminology introduction for devices with media in place. Another video for removable media drives, and how to use them interactively would be appreciated. I'm thinking about terminal commands to do things, but GUIs are good, too.
Very useful, cleared up some of my misunderstandings
This is what you do best - explaining things!
I had fun learning this using the command line only for a Ubuntu Server install.
Another great video! This will for sure help everyone switching to Linux!
Thank you so much, information like this is so often a closely guarded secret.
Clear and concise.
thanks for this vid, I have been waiting for this info for some time.
Wow! This is excellent. I've been using Windows since about 1957 and assumed that Linux had the same type of file system. But a little different and always confusing somehow with extraneous and silly stuff added.
Very clear and concise - thank you! Looking forward to the next one 😄
I've been using Zorin for years. Thinking about using Ubuntu again on another laptop for the heck of it since it had windows 10.
Very clear and will probably be useful for many!
Luckily I learned Unix before being indoctrinated into the world of DOS/Windows, so this was old hat for me, but always a welcome refresher of the basics. I've mostly stuck to the command line for system interaction, so I was glad you showed the GUI versions.
Nice video. The "Disks" graphical utility is a Gnome app. If you have KDE or some other desktop installed, you probably won't see the "Disks" app. You can use KDE Partition Manager, but it is more advanced and is similar to GParted from Gnome. I noticed you don't have a swap partition. I assume you have something else to do swapping. I prefer ZFS because it robust and has features like native encryption, snapshots, and deduplication (don't ever use that!).
Sunday Morning Switching EC
Chris this was still a nice watch even if I know most of what you mentioned. The 'sr' prefixed devices for optical drives is something I've never noticed due to not having a optical drive in my computers, but nice to learn.
Among the partition related stuff on Linux, the separated /home style of partitioning is something I am not used to since Mint and a lot of distros have everything in a single partition (or two is swap is separate) at root (/) instead of having to decide how big each partition should be.
I also haven't see 'mmcblk' mounted devices since my card reader is USB based and mounts my memory card much like flash drives so they get an 'sdx' naming.
Not sure if internal memory card readers that don't use USB, but instead PCIE or another bus would display that 'mmcblk' device. (I'll have to test that on my laptop when I get the opportunity.)