russjr08

Strange! I quite like Ventoy, but I was a bit cautious to recommend it originally - I've seen some distros just flat out not work with it (I just picked up an old Thinkpad and Bluefin would not work via Ventoy for example), and while I assumed Mint would probably work, I couldn't be sure.

I'll definitely remember that for the next time I see someone installing Mint though, so I appreciate you letting me know what fixed it!

Hmm, that's quite an interesting one. The:

Failed to start MokManager: Not Found

Leads me to believe that this is indeed something Secure Boot related (or rather, the system looking for files related to secure boot that aren't being found). Given that you were able to boot it initially, and then it stopped after booting back into Windows, I suspect some shenanigans here possibly from Windows. When you were freeing up disk space, did you use Windows' partition manager (I think its just called "Disk Management") at all and modify any partitions?

Just to confirm, is it just Mint that doesn't boot, or does Windows also not boot? One of the nicer things about UEFI is how you can have multiple boot loaders installed, where as back in the (regular) BIOS days with MBR, only one boot loader could be installed.

That is all to say, try entering your PC's boot menu (so the same menu you initially used to boot the Mint USB), you should have multiple boot options from your PC's drive - though Windows' boot loader usually identifies itself as "Windows Boot Manager". If you choose that option (or if its not "clickable", you should be able to switch the order so that its first - then reboot normally), does it at least boot back into Windows?

Well for one thing, playing online games (that aren't F2P) on PC does not require me to pay a monthly subscription for the privilege of using my own internet connection that I already pay for. That is the most odd subscription to have to pay for - doubly so on Switch where most games of their FP games are ironically P2P, last I'd heard.

I also like being on an open platform where my games will generally continue to follow me as I upgrade. The only one who actually holds even somewhat of a candle to this is Microsoft with their Xbox backwards compatibility program, but there are no guarantees with that. If I had to pick up the PC I used in 2007 to play Portal, I'd be pretty upset given how hardware degrades over time (especially in the realm of handhelds - ie batteries). If I want to play the Nintendo Wii version of Animal Crossing however on an official supported Nintendo console, I'd have to buy another Wii given that when I moved out I didn't steal the Wii from my other siblings who were still growing up. Thankfully I can emulate it on PC (such as my Steam Deck), but I wouldn't want to gamble on emulation being possible, similar to Xbox's BC program.

The money spent on the hardware in the PC ecosystem also go further than just playing games. I work from home, and am able to use that same hardware to do my job. Funnily enough, I thought I was going to end up having to dock my deck to do a shift due to a failing drive - meanwhile I can't even open Spotify on a Switch to listen to some music. If I even tried that on a NS2, Nintendo wants to permanently brick the entire device, no thanks.

So no, I don't need a "Haha! I can have this game and you can't!" to justify a hardware purchase. There are plenty of reasons for me to justify my purchase of PC hardware that won't just be used to harm me.

I mean, sure - but if you really don't trust Apple to keep their word, then it wouldn't matter if their Health app was FOSS or not. iOS itself is still (and probably forever will be) a closed source operating system. That gives them the power to do anything, including hijack the data from FOSS apps.

I have zero interest in Recall, but I thought it was already done on-device? IIRC it always was that way, which is why it's only available on new computers containing dedicated "neural coprocessors" I believe was the term.

Now given that it's closed source, you have to trust that they aren't silently sending data back to themselves - which is where my problem lies, I don't trust them in the slightest.

Of course, no worries! For the USB route, I can provide some instructions just in case you don't already have them (it looks like a lot, but I promise it only looks like a lot! I'm known for being quite verbose). If you end up with questions on any of this, I'm happy to answer 'em:

• Download the ISO for the distribution that you want to use, for Linux Mint Cinnamon as was mentioned earlier, that can be found by selecting the mirror closest to you over at https://linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=319

[This next second step is skipped by a lot of people, however, it's best to get into the habit of actually following through with this one]

• Typically, once the ISO is downloaded, most distributions will give you something called a "SHA256" hash, this is a unique long string of characters that is unique to a file and it allows you to verify that the file you've downloaded is exactly as they intend to provide (both as a "someone hasn't tampered with it from the download source" and "to ensure the file downloaded correctly") - if even a single byte of the file changes, then it causes the entire SHA256 hash to change. Since I don't have a specific tool I use on Windows that I can vouch for, I'd point towards the PowerShell Get-FileHash command to do verification with, I'll expand more at the end just in case you do want to do this [1].

• Then it needs to get "burned" onto a USB drive, which is a bit different from just dragging the ISO file onto the drive. There's a lot of utilities that can do this for you, my favorite is balena etcher because it is compatible with the three major operating systems (Windows, Linux, macOS) and its incredibly simple to use. Plug in your flash drive, open balena etcher, it will ask you for the ISO file, then the flash drive, and finally a "Start" button. Keep in mind, all data on the USB drive will be wiped after starting this - back up anything important you have on the USB drive!

• With the drive plugged into the computer, reboot/start the computer and usually there will be an onscreen help text at the very start indicating a few keys that have different operations, generally one will be called "Boot Menu" (or along those lines - unfortunately its different for each mobo manufacturer, so I cannot be more specific than that - its usually either F2, F12, or DELETE/DEL), press that button a few times quickly and you should get to a screen that gives you some options, and one of them will have your USB drive in there (so long as you had it plugged in when the PC was booting - if you just plugged it in at this point, it usually won't appear, so in that case just do this again)

From here on, it should just boot up [2], and most distributions, including Linux Mint will just have an install option on the desktop - so long as you don't enter that and walk through it, it won't actually make any changes to your PC's drive, allowing you to test drive the distro. Just be aware that some things might be a bit slower, since it is not a full install.

[1]: I just installed PowerShell on Linux to test the Get-FileHash command so that I can make sure I explain it correctly here, definitely not something I expected to do today ha! You'll need to open PowerShell, Windows 11 I believe uses this by default in Windows Terminal - Windows 10 you might need to search "PowerShell" in the start menu. Then at the prompt, type Get-FileHash (there is a space at the end of that), and drag the ISO file onto the Terminal window so that it automatically types out the full path to the file, then hit enter. You should get some output that looks like this:

The Hash bit is the important part, and you'd compare that against the SHA256 hash text file that Linux Mint (or your chosen distro, most of them do have it somewhere next to the downloads) and make sure that it matches up. You can copy the hash from the windows terminal to your clipboard (highlight then right click does a copy, IIRC), then in the notepad that opens from the sha256sum.txt use Ctrl+F and paste the terminal's hash into the find dialog, it should come up with an exact match and that saves you from having to look at each character individually (now in theory you really only have to compare the first 4 or so characters and the last 4 as its extremely rare to have those line-up while the other characters don't, buuut just for the sake of being proper - this is how you'd do it proper). An exact match means you're all good to go, but if it doesn't match then that generally means that the file didn't correctly download (or isn't the file that you're intended to have by the developers).

[2]: If it doesn't boot, its possible "Secure Boot" is getting you. You can disable (Note: warning up ahead) this in your PC's "Setup" utility, which is another key at boot-up, though again due to each motherboard's BIOS being different, it's hard to provide you the exact instructions as to where its at. Linux Mint supports Secure Boot from what I'm aware of, but if you're trying a different distribution that doesn't support it (and are on a relatively newish computer that has it enabled) then this can stop it from booting. As a warning: Verify whether your PC is using BitLocker first before disabling Secure Boot, if it is, make sure you have the recovery key - as BitLocker might be tripped by toggling Secure Boot, and not having the recovery key if this occurs could result in having to do a complete reinstall of Windows, and losing the data within it.

To add on to this, if you don't have an old PC/laptop around, you can also try out practically any Linux distribution in a VM! Tools like virtual box are quite easy to setup.

You can also run most distributions on a live USB without it actually modifying your system, and can give you a better idea about hardware compatibility.

Kind of. You could only open the menus IIRC when you were not in a game, can't recall the exact key bind though. At least, this was the case when I tried replicating the gaming mode session on my PC (I haven't actually used a keyboard on my deck either). It was quite strange.

Jesus christ, that is absolutely disgusting. Texas has plenty of issues they should actually be working on.

I'm glad I managed to get out of there years ago.

As far as I'd heard, Apple's licensing only permitted GPTK to be used to evaluate games and their porting potential, and that they prohibited actually shipping games with it (whether this is just applying to the MAS or whether it was actually a licensing term within GPT I'm unsure).

Of course, I can't find a concrete source on this, and perhaps it changed. The download, which I assume has the license with it, is locked behind having an Apple Developer account it seems.

I can't say that I've heard of them, no. I don't have any need (or desire) to do any sort of identity verification within any of my own personal projects (and I have not been involved with anything of the sorts at my workplace). Because of this, I don't have any insight or thoughts I can provide on them unfortunately.

In the context of Fediverse administration (or any service that you run yourself), even with a service that "handles it for you" I still personally wouldn't want to step into any of it.

I highly doubt it, one that required PII to sign up would be very unlikely to have many users (especially in the current climate, so to speak).

And from the admin side, that sounds like a nightmare to deal with.