Fucking up my UEFI on my laptop, making it difficult to boot into Linux.
Undoing that.
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Fucking up my UEFI on my laptop, making it difficult to boot into Linux.
Undoing that.
Bootloaders don't interact with the UEFI, the UEFI interacts with the bootloader.
Sounds like you just used a bad one. systemd-boot is superb, it autodetects all kernals and shows an option to access the UEFI.
Windows however, assumes it owns your boot partition, so likes to delete Linux bootloaders if installed last.
Got a long one. I've gone back and forth a few times (I've landed on a dual-boot Windows 10 and Arch setup, maining Arch) (btw) and my biggest takeaway is this:
Mainstream Linux distros, like Mint, do have admittedly very polished basic experiences. The problem is, though, is that it breaks down as soon as you introduce it to unique use-cases or hardware features.
Linux, specifically stable distros like Mint, are already ready for mainstream use for people who use it for basic stuff like email, web browsing, desktop social media like Facebook, and so on. It's also very usable for gaming, as we saw with Steam Deck, but still has issues primarily with adoption.
But if you have for example, a 2-in-1 laptop or a VR setup, things break down very quick. I had to configure my 2-in-1 manually and not everything works still, and VR is a joke if you don't have a Vive or Index, and even that's iffy. SteamVR is still extremely buggy and missing features.
Linux is, by design, configurable and open. This is both its greatest strength and weakness, because it allows users to set up their systems how they want, but only if they know how to. A truly "user-friendly" distro is simply not possible if you retain the configurability, which Valve knows, and is why SteamOS is locked down the way it is. This model is growing in popularity but it's not quite here yet.
At the end of the day, I still use it despite these shortcomings because I feel it's important. I should be able to look at the code and know what my machine is doing, and trust that it respects my rights and freedoms. This is why Linux, and maybe BSD, have to win. But for now, I still have a drive with Windows 10 because it's just simply not a full experience yet, and that's okay. For now
I like to use parsec to play games with my friends. When I found out Linux could not host parsec, that was a bummer for me. If parsec had compatibility to host in Linux I'd switch back immediately.
I bought Skyrim for PC so that I could give mods a try. Wine was garbage at the time, and I wanted to use my computer to game. So, Windows it was.
Thanks to proton, I was able to switch to arch on my desktop for the last few years before my power supply died. At least I'm pretty sure that's what's wrong with it. I've been staving off insanity for a few months now with my steam deck. I got a dock for it a couple weeks ago, so I'm technically running an arch desktop again even if it is KDE.
Two (minor) issues I have right now in Linux (stuff I need to research more on how to mitigate, at least the first one):
Ubuntu 23.04.
Tried out a few times in the 90s and early 2000s and the biggest barrier was lack of support for video cards and other hardware that I needed for gaming. It was also more complex to set up at that time, and windows was both easier to work with and resolving issues was easier to figure out.
In all cases I was dual booting and after a while just stopped trying with Linux because the other option was easier, not because I disliked Linux.
Haven't tried recently because windows 10 and 11 have been rock stable for me and Windows Defender plus Firefox and ublock origin have made it safe to use windows. While I thought about giving it a go again recently, I just don't have a reason to switch when things are going to well and I don't have time anymore to just fiddle with it due to other priorities.
I do keep an eye out though in case I do a media server or something as that would be a good use case for another go.