But we couldn’t vote for Kamala because Gaza (Trump is worse), we didn’t get a choice in the primary (With an Incumbent president primaries are a mere formality), prices are too high (inflation had slowed and deflation makes inflation like a trip to Vegas/Disney/Tropica Island/whatever, and a gazillion other excuses. I can forgive someone for being misled for various legit excuses, but those that are in the know or propagated the manipulation, fuck you.

Oh, you mentioned you don’t want to keep a backup of the entire drive. That is fine, but absolutely back it up before starting the install.

I would just boot a live Linux image and dd the entire device file onto some sort of storage. That way you can get a bit for bit copy of the drive that you can make it how it was before you touched it. When all is well, then you can ditch the backup. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep if the stuff is important. Storage devices do fail.

Yes.

To do this, open a terminal, and do this:

sudo apt search ntfs

It will be called something like ntfs-progs or ntfs-fuse or both.

Then:

sudo apt install PKG1 PKG2

Alternatively, the synaptic package tool has a nice GUI

You could leave the Windows installation and not dual boot. Linux can read NTFS volumes. You will probably have to install ntfsprogs or whatever it’s called.

A swap partition is akin to the page file on Windows. The kernel will use it to move memory pages it doesn’t anticipate using in the near future to it so it can use that RAM for other things. It will also use it in a pinch when there isn’t enough RAM on the system. It isn’t strictly necessary, but it can prevent programs from crashing at a huge performance penalty. It is necessary if you want to use sleep or hibernate or whatever it’s called when it is powered off physically but resumes what you were doing instead of booting when you power it back on. That takes as much swap as you have RAM at minimum. If you want that, a good rule of thumb is 1.5 times physical RAM.

I have servers I administer for my job that have over 100GB of RAM with very little swap, like 4GB. The applications and machine are tuned and sized so the physical RAM is at ~85% and swap is barely used. The swap is mainly for non application stuff like IDS agent, backup agent, monitoring agent, etc.

If swap becomes a problem, you can adjust the kernel vm.swappiness parameter as needed. It might take some trial and error to get it right.

Source: I’ve been working with Linux professionally for almost 20 years now.

I doubt that. Consider what we saw with all of the COVID disinformation on social media. I think the idea that social media has no impact on election results is very wrong.

Not just here. This was on all social media

must be a psyop agent from the “enemy”.

You might be.

I’m pointing out the government is shit

Nobody is claiming it doesn’t have problems. If you haven’t been paying attention, there are things that non-MAGA wants to change about it.

Our government is the best in the world

As we constantly complain about citizens United, electoral college, first past the post elections, car dependant infrastructure, and the list goes on.

Or a non-US psyop agent, or a GOP supporter

For my fellow Americans, if you haven’t already voted, get off your ass and vote.

So you are advocating not voting or voting red? Voting absolutely makes a difference at the local level where zoning laws affect car dependency or lack thereof.

What’s your plan?

Considering how many folks here in the US vote based on economics, the choice is obvious in Florida. No government policy will make any kind of property insurance affordable in Florida with how much global warming is kicking their ass. One party will at least pay lip service to to doing something. The other has denied it exists or is a problem.

Part of the problem with increasing fuel prices is the US is super car dependant. I agree, higher prices would drive demand down, but we also need to start building up non car transportion and start updating zoning laws yesterday. I don’t know how anyone else in the US thinks driving all the time is desirable or convenient. It’s $$$$, traffic sucks, it’s dangerous and scary, and people need to get around in states where they shouldn’t be driving. It’s insanity.