BaumGeist

TIL. I didn't know there was a standard, and I've never seen "hxxp", although the rest is familiar looking.

Sorry I'm late to the party: your disk is still using DOS/MBR layout, but you're trying to use UEFI

Unfortunately MBR disks don't work with UEFI. This tracks with the partition type, since fsck is treating it like ext2 (the suggested filesystem for /boot sector) instead of vfat/FAT32 (the suggested filesystem for the Efi System Partition).

First thing I would try is forcing fsck to treat /efi as vfat, since it kept defaulting to ext2. That will tell us if you've got the filesystem as vfat and fsck is wrong or if it's actually corrupted. If it's not corrupted, you should roll back the changes and follow a different guide that mentions changing from MBR (Master Boot Record) to GPT (GUID Partition Table). If it is corrupted, I'm gonna guess you tried to change the filesystems without removing the original fs first, thinking you could outsmart the computer and avoid temporarily relocating your files (speaking from experience). In that case your only hope would be disk forensics software. Best bet would be to salvage what you can, then change the disk type.

Unfortunately changing the disk type is not as easy as changing filesystems, the part of the disk that tells the PC where the files are located is the thing that's being rewritten, so that operation does "erase" the disk (all the bits are still physically there, but the PC doesn't know where they're located). You'll want to do a full backup of all your /usr /bin /root /lib /home /etc and anything else necessary to get your system back to how you like with all your important files, then change the partioning scheme to GPT and, hey, since it's now a blank disk anyway, might as well treat it as a fresh install of Arch to avoid further headaches.

Too early to tell for sure, but it looks like the current theory is that it's some combination of aggregating existing breach data and information gleaned from credential stuffing attacks.

It's more plausible than some absurd number of websites all had the same 0-day leading to 26,000,000,000 accounts leaked. The people selling these aren't exactly trustworthy and are just as likely to repackage old leaks to rip each other off with.

The big takeaway is that you do not own this computer. It is not yours, it is being lent to them for a very specific purpose. And what you want to do, hell what you're already doing, is way outside of that purpose.

How would you feel if you lent a friend your conputer to check their email and found out they had bypassed a lot of your security mechanisms (passwords) to set up their own admin account?

What about when you begrudgingly get a MFA app on your personal phone because your employer's too cheap to shell out for a yubikey or hardware token? How would you feel if their app also rooted your phone just for shits and giggles?

What you're proposing is not only dangerous to your career, it's also potentially illegal. And also just downright unethical.

what does it mean if intent is "low" or "high"?

Also this is either quite old, or they're just delusional boomers ranking google, amazon, facebook and youtube above the "crap" line. I haven't even touched Yahoo in ages, so I'm just giving them the benefit of the doubt there

Debian + Gnome. The debian wiki is full of great documentation. If you prefer watching, there's so many great (and not-so-great) courses on YouTube. I personally found tutoriaLinux's series helpful. Please understand that is merelyy what helped me at that point in my journey not necessarily the best tutorial series for you or anyone else.

My biggest tip is, regardless of the teacher or the lesson: follow along. Learn by doing, not by watching someone else doing. If you find yourself thinking anything like "couldn't I have done this" or "but what would happen if I changed this parameter": Do It. Try it out. Seee what happens.

Coincidentally, my second biggest tip is: use a test environment to do anything that you don't fully understand. Even if it's only a new folder with a bunch of empty files to practice file manipulation commands, it's way better than losing your important files. Anything that affects software configuration should be backed up first, anything that affects the OS should be tested in a VM

Your time is quite valuable, but there's a reallllly good chance you're underestimating the cost of your process in windows:

The OS is cheap. Even buying a key at full price, it's like ~$100 ballpark. But the software you use costs money, and if it's business grade, it's an "As A Service" subscription plan. And any plugins (including VSTs) aren't free if you want good quality ones. And support plans cost money. And upgrades cost money. And getting new hardware because the newest version of the OS doesn't supoort anything older than 5 years costs money. And you still end up spending your valuable time on troubleshooting, whether it's you or waiting on a tech to do it, because problems and errors still occur.

Seriously, keep a spreadsheet of how much time you spend on getting your programs and hardware to work the way you want, even if it's the time you have to spend waiting for someone else to do the fixing for you. Your time is valuable, and you don't deserve someone pulling the wool over your eyes to rent you something you should own.

I'm not saying Linux is a better fit for you, nor that you're in the wrong for not wanting to hop on the hypetrain. Just that it's not as cut and dry as it seems, the cost isn't as low as you think, and the whole "Just Works" narrative in any tech is a myth.

I want to open the internet but its not on my desktop. How do I get it back? Also, what happened to my C drive? All the files are gone now, and there's all these other ones I don't need called like "lib" and "home." I tried using that app store you showed me, but I couldn't find microsoft word; it tried to install something else instead, I think I might have a virus. It's probably that "wine" virus I tried installing, some guide on the internet said it would give me word, but it didn't bring word back. I don't think it did anything, but you should still do a virus scan. I tried to, but I couldn't find the Norton button.

...

check the Downloads folder, OfficeInstaller(1).exe through OfficeInstaller(12).exe

...

It worked before you messed with it. Why did you do that? What do you mean you were "installing word" it's just a program you click, why'd you need that black window with text in it?

try to teach them about the terminal

I shouldn't have to learn all this hacker shit to install a simple program.

TL;DR: you overestimate what "noobie" means

I don't buy the whole "the more users a software has, the better it gets" rhetoric. Historically this has been the opposite of the case. There's an even higher users-to-contributors ratio amongst the general population. Not all users share the same respect for the philosophy behind FOSS.

If the driving force behind design decisions becomes "what keeps people happy so they'll keep using our software" and not "freedom," there's now a practical incentive to sell out and introduce more Intellectual Property shenanigans into the ecosystem. After all, it's a lot easier to hire devs and churn out new features and keep the software actively developed for the foreseeable future if there's money in it. And the only way there can be money in it is if there are proprietary licenses shitting up the place, and Shit As A Service suscription models as far as the eye can see.

Linux always has been, and should always continue to be, about freedom. If that freedom comes with user-friendliness, great! If not, then we have to pay the price: taking responsibility for the tools and tech we use and learning how to use them properly and contributing to them to maintain a community of likeminded people. Otherwise, we're not worthy of the freedom and the responsibilities it entails.

I get your point about elitism and gatekeeping. We're no better than Windows users or Mac users or any other OS' users. We just have a set of values unique to our community, and they have sets of values that differ. We also shouldn't be throwing users under the bus in the name of politics, but part of what makes Linux slightly more bearable is the way the driving philosophy of Free Software is evident throughout. Linux is better than it could be because it attracts the people who want to be here for the community's values, not the people who have to be coaxed and coerced into accepting the values to use the "best"/"easiest"/"friendliest" software.

Your use-case says "ARM laptop" to me.

Pros: Get some kind of SoC laptop, and never worry about battery charge again. They're also lighter-weight and better at thermal management. Right now, Linux on ARM is still kind of fledgling so there's not as many apps made to run on ARM natively; the upside is that since there's not as many possible combinations of hardware, there aren't nearly as many edge case bugs and issues.

Cons: If you want youtube in 1080p+ and 60 fps or if you want to use Visual Studio (instead of something lighter-weight), you'll either want the most powerful SoC laptop on the market (probably something by Apple), or not SoC at all. Same goes if you want to have like 5+ programs opened at once and 10+ tabs open on firefox. If you're on the opposite side with me and don't mind if the video is 30 fps or the resolution is 720i and using vim as an IDE, you can get away with something dirt cheap. The other downside of course being the inability to upgrade hardware, which goes hand-in-hand with the reduced hardware combinations aforementioned. Also, since it's not as widely adopted/developed, there are more standard case bugs/issues.

It does force a more minimal approach to computing—it's not powerful, and it's on the lower-end of ARM laptops—but my Pinebook has only done well by me. The security/privacy factor of Pine was also a big plus.

Please report back in a few weeks and a few months, and maybe even a year or two down the road.

Generally "I'm really (happy/upset/confused/sad) with it" after only a day isn't really good feedback for people thinking of changing, but it does provide a good baseline to measure against once you're more familiar with it, and getting glimpses into your learning curve might be really helpful for people looking for advice on which OS to go with.

Uncharitability to those you disagree with, style without substance, and all built upon thought-terminating cliches.

This isn't helpful or enlightening or informative, it's entertaining but not in an interesting nor original way. It reminds me of 2010s Reddit memes where everything was about adding as many "fucks" as possible because our moms aren't supervising our internet time anymore. It espouses a consoomer mindset of "gotta have bigger numbers and shinier visuals because all that matters is appealing to lizard-brain."

And it's all couched in the obvious mindset that any criticism will be met with "ok boomer" (I'll almost be insulted if I don't get one) because being superior is more important than being right. Y'know... like a boomer?

You've got a point, focus on that: you can make the case that Linux fits your use case, or that certain mindsets within the Linux community are hindering progress. But please do so in a way that doesn't just lend itself to more infighting and drama. That shit is for shallow people who have nothing to contribute and only serve as the cultural detritus that destroys communities and community-driven projects.