Let's Discuss Operative Systems

[shevek]

I've finally managed to dualboot Windows 10 and endeavorOS. It was a bit of a hassle due to how my EFI partition is and some other factors, but now it works and I am happy
I am also pleasantly surprised how things just work right now. Nothing to fix - aside from personal keyboard preferences. Peripherals, graphics, sound, streaming, and the software I wanted on here for now have caused no issue so far.

I'll post a picture in the desktop thread once I've customized it to my liking.

[Icey!]

I've finally managed to dualboot Windows 10 and endeavorOS. It was a bit of a hassle due to how my EFI partition is and some other factors, but now it works and I am happy
I am also pleasantly surprised how things just work right now. Nothing to fix - aside from personal keyboard preferences. Peripherals, graphics, sound, streaming, and the software I wanted on here for now have caused no issue so far.

I'll post a picture in the desktop thread once I've customized it to my liking.

I'm curious, did you install EndeavorOS on to a drive that already had Windows? Not sure if it's possible too dual-boot a drive that already has Windows installed, most tutorials I've seen assume that you have an empty drive and has you setup the partition as you install the Linux distro first.

[shevek]

I'm curious, did you install EndeavorOS on to a drive that already had Windows? Not sure if it's possible too dual-boot a drive that already has Windows installed, most tutorials I've seen assume that you have an empty drive and has you setup the partition as you install the Linux distro first.

It definitely works! It’s even recommended to have Windows installed first because installing it after Linux can break the boot files.

You should create an unused partition in Windows first by shrinking the existing Windows partition. Sometimes it won’t let you shrink much because of unmovable files in the way. That’s usually hibernation files if you have a laptop - if you remove those and restart there should be more space, at least it worked for me.
Before installing you have to disable Secure Boot in BIOS (and Fast Boot but I didn’t have that). In my case I also had to disable Intel’s TPM (“Intel Platform Trust Technology”) so nothing would be locked - be warned that this clears your Windows pin and you will be asked to reset it next time you log in.

Then in case of endeavorOS you have several choices for the dualboot;
Either you choose “Install alongside” which makes sense if you didn’t previously set a partition aside in Windows. It will then shrink the Windows partition itself and install, but it’s not recommended (potentially not enough shrinkage possible, like in my case where I had a measly 4GB or so before removing hibernation).

The other option is “replace partition with endeavorOS” where you just select the empty partition you previously created in Windows. It lets you choose if it should use the existing EFI partition (Windows and Linux can share the same one as long as it’s big enough) or create a new one. In my case i had to choose to create a new one because my existing EFI partition is only 260MB, cannot be increased without cutting into Windows files, and I needed at least 500MB of systemd. Grub is smaller, but I didn’t wanna use it for now. The downside is that with this automatic approach it doesn’t set a separate home partition or swap partition.

The other option is to manually partition; it lets you select and create the EFI partition, and if you want the home or swap partitions too.

The rest is just the normal installation.

[Memory]

I'm curious, did you install EndeavorOS on to a drive that already had Windows? Not sure if it's possible too dual-boot a drive that already has Windows installed, most tutorials I've seen assume that you have an empty drive and has you setup the partition as you install the Linux distro first.

There is a certain risk of destroying the partitions on a new Linux installation, so it's safer to use two seperate disks (also more failsafe, also with hard disks instead of SSDs, it was faster as well). However it's possible to use a single disk with multiple partitions on it that carries Windows and Linux at the same time. Some installers, like the one from Linux Mint, actually offered to shrink the Windows partition to make room for Linux on the same drive.

[JackFrost]

Im back. Ive decided to try Endeavour OS because It looks nice and Win10 is getting really slow lately. Anything I should really know about it that sets it apart from other distros? What software should I use with it?

[shevek]

Im back. Ive decided to try Endeavour OS because It looks nice and Win10 is getting really slow lately. Anything I should really know about it that sets it apart from other distros? What software should I use with it?

You should know that it is based on Arch Linux, so whenever you run into issues or want to know specific stuff that you cannot find in the endeavourOS forums, you can find in the Arch Linux Wiki or just search for the information in regards to Arch Linux. If something says they're compatible with Ubuntu, Arch, etc etc. then you know it will work for endeavourOS because it is Arch based.
As an Arch based system, you really profit from the AUR (Arch User Repository) that maintains software packages. Installing stuff is often as easy as using pacman/yay/makepkg and entering the name it has in the repository. If the package is actively maintained, you always automatically get updates this way.

You should also know that it is a rolling release distro, so usually every day or two you will have notifications that new upstream updates are available; there are no big releases every few months, instead you always get the chance to update to something newer. This has its pros and cons you should read up on (bugs vs earlier bug fixes, vulnerabilities vs faster fix for them etc.) and if you wanna install them immediately all the time or wait a bit inbetween.

Also, if you use Discord, you should be aware that their officially supported clients are "Linux" and "Ubuntu" (it says that in the update screen for any distro), for Arch there is a maintained one in the AUR, but it has some bugs and lacks some features - Krisp, for example, cannot be used (noise suppression), and streams cannot be popped out, and you may be unable to screenshare with sound. The browser version should make these possible, but has its own restrictions by Discord themselves, of course.

Research before you install what desktop environment you want (KDE, Cinnamon, XFCE etc.)

As for software, just use whatever you did on Windows.

[georgemoody]

Windows feels too primitive, too limited, as if its core is still stuck in eternal september (just take a look at dialer.exe). even with such backwards compatibility, it still fails to be a modern OS in my opinion, falling behind on many areas compared to its competitors, they’ve only recently tried to remedy some of its issue (like adding a package manager).


Linux would then be my obvious choice but there’s just…too much. too many distros, too many desktop managers, too many packmans, too many ways to install software, so much to pick from that it overloads your brain and you get confused; venturing from site to site trying to choose one but going nowhere at the end.


macOS feels like an odd mix between the two: having the option of UNIX and its commands, not giving you so much control that you feel like you could fuck it up at any endpoint, but also having a simpler, less in your face system of doing things. it’s the idiot’s linux dare I say, and I’m an idiot so it’s the perfect for my usage.

I can’t disagree about its shortcomings (like not having window snapping) but they don’t affect me as much as I thought it would; overall I feel much happier using it than using windows or linux. Oh and the ecosystem integration is a sweet cherry on top that I can’t resist losing.

[Melooon]

like not having window snapping

Window snapping always confuses me; there are SO MANY Mac apps that add it and even macOS does this weird split screen snapping thing now; but whenever I encounter it I turn it off immediately, I find it really annoying having windows jumping around the place, I'd much rather drag a window to size myself and have it stay that size, even fullscreen mode tends to bother me

[georgemoody]

and on the hardware end, the now complete inability to boot into a non-Apple OS on M(1, 2, 3...) machines since Boot Camp is gone. You get a VM (of an ARM version of Windows, with little compatibility) or squat. On a Windows machine, you can wipe it and replace it with literally any other x86 OS---even, if you're willing to Hackintosh, the Mac OS! I mean, even Chromebooks have Linux.

Microsoft sadly didn’t help much in this regards, locking Windows on Arm behind a contract between them and Qualcomm (which apparently expires in 2024) causing apple to ditch bootcamp (and I doubt they’d like to revisit the idea 4 years later). I suppose they could’ve gone the linux route but maybe they saw it as too confusing for the common man or too similar to macOS for it to not be worth it. Getting Bootcamp from such a locked down company like apple in the first place was a godsend, I’m surprised they didn’t kill it off earlier.

Also, the Asahi linux project does allow you to (dual) boot into linux! it’s still in beta for now but it does work and is very promising.

[georgemoody]

Window snapping always confuses me; there are SO MANY Mac apps that add it and even macOS does this weird split screen snapping thing now; but whenever I encounter it I turn it off immediately, I find it really annoying having windows jumping around the place, I'd much rather drag a window to size myself and have it stay that size, even fullscreen mode tends to bother me

Yeah, never was a huge window snap user back when I used windows. Love fullscreen mode though, going through all my open apps with some quick gestures while having them take as much of the screen as they can is greatly productive for me.

[akbatten]

Linux would then be my obvious choice but there’s just…too much. too many distros, too many desktop managers, too many packmans, too many ways to install software, so much to pick from that it overloads your brain and you get confused; venturing from site to site trying to choose one but going nowhere at the end.

A side effect of Linux being open is that any organization or person can make their own distro. They then have to try and convince people to pick theirs. I don't think it matters too much what distro you pick; Ubuntu and its derivatives are the most popular, which makes apt the most popular package manager.

Popularity means more support so that's what I go with unless there's a clearly better option. I don't like the Gnome desktop/window manager the default Ubuntu comes with, so I go with Cinnamon or KDE depending on how I'm feeling. Besides distro family and package manager, pretty much everything else (including desktop managers, default file browsers, etc.) can be changed with "apt install ..." (or rpm or whatever packman you have).

I do like how installing software on Windows is more standardized though. Distro package managers cover pretty much everything, but with no central authority to make Linux users all start doing the same thing, that'll continue to be a problem.