This is an excellent explanation. Thank you for taking the time to write it.

This pre-IPO invitation to buy is the “pump” part of pump and dump, of course everyone hates it, lol.

“I think it’s pretty cool that Reddit is doing this IPO offer to their mods and users,” a Reddit user who asked me to identify him as Kevon tells me. “It’s a nice little thank you that actually may have some monetary value.”

Kevon’s considering buying shares in the Reddit program, and may buy more once it goes public, if he feels the stock is undervalued.

Kevon sounds like a nice guy, but someone should explain to him the difference between being given options and buying shares at the IPO price. Reddit’s not doing him any favors.

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It’s not a left or right debate, it’s about civilization! The big issue needs to be resolved: platforms are not neutral, the algorithms reward the extreme, the grotesque, the destructive, the aberrant, the chaotic. And this is paid for! There are people profiting from the degeneration of society.

– Silvio Almeida, Minister of Human Rights and Citizenship, Brazil

I don’t think it has ever been said better or more concisely. I’m sorry that people have had to die for it to be said, and that more will die before it is ever corrected. But that guy gets it.

New to Linux, this is fantastic. Thank you.

I believe a USB WiFi dongle will be a better idea than modifying live images of various distros

Yeah, you and me both. But I’d be willing to do it for one or two, just to be able to prove that THIS laptop can and will run Linux with its current hardware, should he choose install it.

Also, the only thing lost by modifying LiveUSB trials is my time. If I corrupt the image, or it doesn’t work, or I make it crap out somehow – all of which is likely, lol – I still have done no harm at all. It’s just a USB stick. And I will also have learned a few things along the way, like how Linux distros install and use drivers.

you would be installing the firmware on the Linux system, not onto the WiFi module.

Then technically (not that I personally have the chops to do it) this “firmware” could also be something plugged into the distro on the LiveUSB stick along with the wl driver. That distro is getting its current drivers from somewhere on that USB already, so I’m not reinventing the wheel, just adding to what is already there.

I guess I just have to read up more. Thanks for letting me know the difference.

This I can do. Thanks!

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EndeavorOS

I’ll add that to the list of distros I want to try, I hadn’t seen it before but it does run on minimal hardware. I like that it’s built on Arch because Arch itself is a good OS, but intimidating for a noob, lol. According to Distrowatch.com it’s near the top of their page hits so it must be popular. Thanks for the recommend!

Bungie will ban you for running destiny 2 on Linux.

That is so bizarre to me. According to this article, Destiny 2 was already playable on Linux when it was officially ported to Google Stadia, and no one, not even Bungie, can explain why they won’t support it on Linux or Steam Deck, much less ban a player for trying. That’s crazy.

I tried Budgie (packaged with Solus 4.4 “Harmony”) yesterday and loved it. It seemed fast enough even on this old MacBook with 4GB of RAM, but I was just test driving it on a live USB so I don’t know what it would do in a real world scenario. Even so, it was definitely the most pleasant OS/DE combo of all the distros I’ve tried so far.

Well, now I’m back to one USB at a time for Macs, using Rufus to do the deed and just overwriting the ones I know I won’t like. Same as it ever was. I think the problem has to do with how Ventoy interacts with the boot process that involves assumptions about Mac architecture; everything the author suggested, like enabling Grub2, just laughed and flashed the ol’ cursor. Not all Macs are the same under the hood and there have been some fairly big swings in architecture over the years, so when I read that he had not ever tested it specifically on a Macbook it made me think he tested it on one other Mac somewhere and that was enough for him, lol. I still think it’s genius just not on Macs.

Some of the distros I can try now; others have to wait until I get more memory in the Macbook. So right now I’m just doing preliminary look-sees just to find out if I like a given distro, and if it will find drivers and do hibernate without an issue. Funny thing is that one I can’t really look at yet except via review videos may be the one I go with: OpenSUSE Leap. As far as I can tell, it has no Live USB trial, you have to install it. But it’s incredibly feature rich, can bend to a user’s needs even if those needs aren’t foreseen out of the box, it’s not overly CLI dependent but CLI tools are there if you prefer them, has an extensive selection of software, supports multiple package handlers, and most importantly, the wiki is very complete. I just can’t install it until I get more RAM in the test box, lol.

I expect similar with Debian, to be honest, just because it’s so robust, though Debian does support live USB preview. Same with Pop! OS, there is a live USB preview but I have to wait until I get more RAM into the test box.

But of the ones I’ve tried so far, Linux Lite 6.4 seemed kludgy and repellent (not sure why, but I hated it); Zorin OS 16.3 Core was visually gorgeous but seemed VERY limited in other ways (maybe the paid tier would be different); Solus 4.4 “Harmony” with Budgie was responsive, intuitive, and fabulous to use but I need to look under the hood further, and Linux Mint 21.2 remains the winner so far, but I would rather go with a different desktop than Cinnamon (I do not find Cinnamon intuitive) so it’s on the list to retry with Kfce.

So I’m still looking. And now I have an in-law with an old MacBook Pro who is also paying close attention in case I find something, lol. But it’s all free and it’s been years since I did something like this, so I’m happy. Thanks again for your help!

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Ext4 seems to be the default across the distros I’ve looked at so if I can just run with that, all the better. Thank you for pointing this out, much appreciated.

I have a bit of bad news. Ventoy is not supported on Macs. Mac minis, Macbooks, just Mac hardware in general as far as I can tell.

But it’s a fact that’s buried deep into the Github notes when you go looking for support; if you’re not running a Mac there’s no way you would have known. But there it is:

https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/282
https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/381
https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/246
https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/1056

But this comment especially from the repository owner was delightful after I’d already done everything suggested and more:

Ventoy actually doesn’t support Macbook. I never test it on Macbook.
You can do some try though

Lol, no. No more try, though at least this post let me know it was not user failure. But I want you to know it was a great suggestion, I did learn more along the way so it wasn’t all a waste of time, and I’ll definitely try Ventoy again when I get to non-Apple machines.

Thought I should tell you just in case you run into another Mac user. And thank you for the well wishes – we’re both nerds, so one of us disappearing into tech at odd moments is standard operating procedure around here. Happy Labor Day if you’re in the US.