So in 2013 I had a Windows XP computer that hard drive had died. By 2013 XP was a rather old OS. It worked perfectly fine, other than I probably could have done well to do a reinstall.

Problem is, in 2013 I was making $115 per week. I couldn’t afford to spend 2 months pay on a new PC. I had a spare hard drive I could replace it with, but the problem was, if I bought a new WinXP installation disc, it would cost $250 for an OS that was hard to find because of how long it hadn’t been supported. It would be like trying to find a Win Vista CD today…if they were still trying to charge full price.

So I thought “Ok, what if I try this Linux thing?”

So I did what everyone here is going to groan at me for saying. I tried the one everyone online was saying was the best one. Ubuntu.

I HATED it. The other thing besides my IMMEDIATE hatred for it, was the fact that it didn’t work. I couldn’t get the internet, or sound, or bluetooth, or a lot of things working.

And when I was going to the library, asking questions online, and then printing the answers a week later, everyone was saying “Oh, try these other disros…”

It is ASTOUNDING to me how linux users think. The answer to every problem someone else is facing is “Your way is stupid, that’s why it doesn’t work. Do it MY way, on MY distros”

Everybodys answer was that I was doing it wrong for using Ubuntu instead of (insert their flavor of the month here).

I must have downloaded 50 different distros and tried installing all of them one after another in a 3 month timespan. Hardly any of them worked. I think I got 2 of them to install besides Ubuntu.

Mint was one, I think the other was Cinnimon.

Some wouldn’t install at all. Some would crash frequently. Almost all of them had a solid green tint to the screen. Like it was missing video drivers. Eventuallly I just gave up.

After a few years, I eventually got a new Windows 7 PC in 2014.

And it’s been running fine ever since. But now we’re at a point where if you buy a new product, there’s a chance it won’t work with Windows 7. The problem is, I REFUSE to go to Windows 10 or 11 with how much privacy invasive those platforms have become.

So I was trying to see if Zorin could install this one program. 8BitDo Ultimate Software V2. But I don’t have much hard drive space to install Zorin. So I heard you can install it on a liveUSB. Since I just need to use the program once really, it didn’t matter if it’s going to be a temporary installlation.

Well, Zorin wanted me to install Windows Software App. So I thought I did. It asked me if I wanted to installl. I said yes. The spinny circle went around for a while, and then it told me I could either uninstall or open the app’s homepage.

After a few more attempts at fiddling with it, nothing happened. I came to the conclusion (maybe incorrectly, as it’s just my own assumptions), that maybe it’s not working because it’s not a permanent install.

So I used THIS GUIDE to try to make a persistant USB stick.

Everything went fine until the actual install at 5:59 of the video. At 6:00 he jump cuts to after the installation. The installation itself took roughly 5 hours.

And then it took roughly 30 minutes to boot. I googled it, and it should only take 15-20 minutes to install, and boot almost instantly.

Couple this, with an unrelated issue where I haven’t been able to turn on my fan on my raspberry pi for 4 years, and I think linux just hates me.

Three different sets of hardware. Video guides where I do exactly as they show. Nothing helps. Linux has always just NOT worked for me. Like it puts down a seemingly easy problem to fix, but then won’t actually do the thing you’re telling it to do to fix it.

Like in the guide he’s showing at 6:12. I’ve done every exactly the same thing he did, in the exact same way he did them, but he gets his second partition mounted as “target”. I don’t.

I tried sudo mount /dev/sdc/ but terminal spit out an error.

But I watched to the end of the video, and he says that part was only if you have errors booting the device. I did not have errors booting the device, so I skipped it, because it had been at that point close to 6 hours since I started the project, for something that was supposed to take an hour, and I just wanted to go to bed.

So the persistant drive boot sequence starts, and just starting the boot took 30 minutes.

And now, everything is just sluggishly slow. It’s like I’m trying to run Windows XP on a computer that would struggle with Windows 3.1

The hardware shouldn’t be an issue. Especially since supposedly Zorin 17 only needs 1.5ghz, duel core, and I have 4 core 3.75ghz. Every spec they listed as needed for Zorin I easily have double.

So I figure there must be some OTHER problem. And that’s where I am now. I’ve spent a combined total of about 12 hours trying to find some way to run 1 program for about 5 minutes. All I need to do is run it once. Then I’ll be done with it. I just need to find something that will actually run it.

  • theunknownmuncher@lemmy.worldEnglish
    111·
    23 hours ago

    It sounds to me like you have been very unlucky with unsupported hardware, based on your network, sound, and graphics issues. Back in 2013-2014 this was a common problem, and while amazing progress has been made to bring support to much more hardware since then, unfortunately there are still some brands and models that are notorious for not having support. I’ve just learned to avoid these brands and do some quick research to see if hardware has mainline kernel support or if the manufacturer offers a Linux driver, before I purchase it.

    I think another problem is that you are probably making things more complicated and less ideal by trying to run from a USB. Booting from a USB will be the opposite of instant. Booting and running programs will be VERY slow, because USB drives are not as fast as a proper hard drive, and it will take more time to load the system and programs into memory, as well as read and write persistent files. This will affect the system performance across the board, no matter how fast your CPU is.

    Another issue is that you are trying to run an application for an operating system that is not the OS you are using. Again, amazing progress has been made over the past 10 years on compatibility layers and containers in order to run Windows programs on Linux, BUT it’s not always going to work for every Windows program. I’m not really familiar with the program you are trying to run. I think maybe the easiest path forward for this would be to look into running a Windows virtual machine.

    When you keep getting the same responses and advice, I understand dismissing it as just people touting “their way” and “their distro”, but also, you have to consider that maybe there is a reason you hear this advice over and over. And remember that many many people, and the people offering this advice, are running Linux without these problems and completing all of their typical computing workflows with it, from gaming to productivity and development to running highly stable servers.

    When following guides, you will need to tailor and customize commands to fit your exact situation, for example with your sudo mount /dev/sdc command, your drive may be named differently in your system, it could be /dev/sdb or /dev/sdd instead depending on the number of drives detected by the system, or something completely different depending on the kind of drive it is. Many commands you can expect to copy and paste directly, some you need to change to fit your system, and there is a learning curve to understanding when that is the case and how to make the required adjustments. There are a lot of poor quality guides out there that might not make this apparent.

    You’re using an operating system that you do not seem super familiar with, and you are trying to do things with it that are not really a typical or standard use case for it, so I think it should be expected that it will be a learning experience with potential issues to overcome along the way.

    Is there an alternative program for Linux that does the same thing as the one you need to run?