this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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Linux

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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Damn I've always wanted Windows to have that. Being able to put user folders on another partition, or even another drive, at install time. And being able to use "dynamic disk" (aka software raid) to expand partitions across disks as storage requirements grow. I know it is possible to setup, but with a lot of workarounds and annoying problems.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Windows user folders are nearly unusable in my opinion, too many programs throw in random folders and files everywhere. Especially the Documents folder, too many games putting incoherent stuff in there

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Jup, useless folder. There's one related thing I've complained a lot about lately, so I'm gonna complain some more about it:

Microsoft got this "great" idea of trying to repeatedly trick me into uploading that Documents folder to the cloud. A folder filled with GBytes of Battlefield and Assassins Creed cache files, Starfield mods, MS database files, etc... A lot of files that are in constant change, or locked the entire session. Annoying as hell. I love Onedrive, but I dont know why its so damn important for them to have those files.

Sometimes I really wish I could switch to some Linux distro instead.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

It's asinine that Onedrive doesn't have an equivalent of the decades-old gitignore technology...

There seems to be a workaround, though - archive link. It should work as long as the local and remote conflict remains unresolved, or Microsoft decides to just push the remote onto the local machine and delete your files instead.

[–] timbuck2themoon 3 points 8 months ago

Except ms wants you running out of space and upgrading to a higher level tier. Upton Sinclair and all that.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

I'm pretty sure you can just mount a volume to C:\Users.

I definitely wouldn't recommend changing the userdir paths in the system. Many of the office computers I work with are set up that way and it's always a pain in the ass when an application expects the home path to be located on C:.

[–] gravitas_deficiency 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

when an application expects the home path to be located on C:

Clarification: does NTFS just suck at understanding that a directory-mapped storage device mounted under C: should be treated as if it were C: when within the mount dir?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

The second paragraph is about changing the path where Windows should look for the user files (analogous to running usermod -h /new/home user to change the user entry in the passwd file), not changing the filesystem. I don't see any reason why a directory-mapped device would behave any differently than a regular directlry... although in my brief time working with softlinks and directory junctions, I learned not to have expectations of Windows/NTFS.

I think the issue is that Windows stores the home path in two environment variables -- HOMEDRIVE contains the drive letter, and HOMEPATH contains the path relative to the drive's root (no, I'm not willing to call it an absolute path). If an application only uses the HOMEPATH envvar, the full path will default to whichever drive letter the environment's working directory belongs to, which is most likely C:. I don't have a Windows machine to test it though, so I might be wrong.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

I remember doing this in macOS, when I got my first SSD. I installed it and kept the os on the SSD and mapped my user directory to my hdd. It made upgrades and re-installs much easier, which was a plus because it was actually a hackintosh.