I have multiple lying around, because I’m also very forgetful. And also not only for emergencies, but mainly for maintenance, eg. editing/moving partitions.
It’s definitely something you should have lying around for exactly this kind of contingency. That goes for Windows too, btw. Windows installations also get borked and having a Linux live system available can be a life saver.
I’ve managed MSP services and this is hog wash. In 6 years of providing Linux, Windows, and OSX I can’t recall a single instance of windows bricking itself without kernel level software running in the background. And those instances are partition errors done outside of windows land.
You have to be trying to brick Windows these days to get to an unbootable state.
I on the other hand have multiple team members running random distos fuck up video drivers to the point where we had to wipe everything clean. And Linux computers were given out at a rate of like 1 for every 20 mac or osx machine.
So sure you could carry this around at all times but it’s not going to be helpful for 99% of users in reality.
So there haven’t been any problems with Windows updates recently? I’m happy things are running well in your particular shop. But that’s not the regular experience of every business let alone home user.
So what, we’re just making shit up now? Windows computers bricking themselves in secret? Business across the planet dealing with Windows breaking on updates? What subset of home users are you claiming have issues with windows looking itself on update?
There have definitively been multiple times windows systems bricked themselves on me without it being my fault
It’s not rarer than Linux systems bricking in my experience. In addition, Linux systems tend to be a lot more fixable, but with windows being just a black box sometimes you’re just shit out of luck and have to reinstall
It really depends. I like using live boot arch since it just gets me into a shell that I can chroot with really fast and I don’t have to worry about any graphical elements coming into play. Of course if it is something like a laptop then that is a totally different story.
Generally though I keep luks encrypted usb drive with a full install with most everything you would need for those situations complete with a fully set up and remote managed environment over tailscale so I can keep my preferences up to date and even remote in from another device of my choice. It makes the whole recovery process suck a whoooole lot less.
Depends on how you break it. Broken partitions? Sure, Gparted it is. Everything else? Most often can be fixed with a quick arch-chroot and then undoing whatever caused the mess.
So yeah, I agree with the Ventoy suggestion. Such a neat little tool that it’s earned it’s place on my key-chain.
Same. Though I moved to a 30€ 256GB USB-A + USB-C stick, which is more than enough for my ISOs and very quick to write on. And I hope it withstands a lot of write cycles too.
Or just a USB-Stick with ventoy
How do you prepare the USB stick without a secondary computer? Or do you have one lying around in case of emergencies?
I have multiple lying around, because I’m also very forgetful. And also not only for emergencies, but mainly for maintenance, eg. editing/moving partitions.
It’s definitely something you should have lying around for exactly this kind of contingency. That goes for Windows too, btw. Windows installations also get borked and having a Linux live system available can be a life saver.
I’ve managed MSP services and this is hog wash. In 6 years of providing Linux, Windows, and OSX I can’t recall a single instance of windows bricking itself without kernel level software running in the background. And those instances are partition errors done outside of windows land.
You have to be trying to brick Windows these days to get to an unbootable state.
I on the other hand have multiple team members running random distos fuck up video drivers to the point where we had to wipe everything clean. And Linux computers were given out at a rate of like 1 for every 20 mac or osx machine.
So sure you could carry this around at all times but it’s not going to be helpful for 99% of users in reality.
My windows 11 bricked itself before i even got to the end of the setup process lmao
👌👍
So there haven’t been any problems with Windows updates recently? I’m happy things are running well in your particular shop. But that’s not the regular experience of every business let alone home user.
So what, we’re just making shit up now? Windows computers bricking themselves in secret? Business across the planet dealing with Windows breaking on updates? What subset of home users are you claiming have issues with windows looking itself on update?
Not this vague bullshit.
There have definitively been multiple times windows systems bricked themselves on me without it being my fault
It’s not rarer than Linux systems bricking in my experience. In addition, Linux systems tend to be a lot more fixable, but with windows being just a black box sometimes you’re just shit out of luck and have to reinstall
👌👍 I guess the rando non technical users we support all day have more tech skills than you 🤷♂️
2025 and still having these arguments about the cons of Linux desktop. The only real reason it’s as good as it is, is valve pumping money into it.
That’s a big assumption about who I am, what I do, and my abilities, isn’t it?
You don’t know everything, and your experiences aren’t universal, you know
I have a half dozen of them setup. Any external drive that I use for copying files first gets built with Ventoy and some images.
Nahh. Just use a live boot of the distro of your choice.
Only Arch doesn’t make sense though. Livebooting Debian KDE for Gparted is easier than working with fdisk etc. to eg. move a partition.
It really depends. I like using live boot arch since it just gets me into a shell that I can chroot with really fast and I don’t have to worry about any graphical elements coming into play. Of course if it is something like a laptop then that is a totally different story.
Generally though I keep luks encrypted usb drive with a full install with most everything you would need for those situations complete with a fully set up and remote managed environment over tailscale so I can keep my preferences up to date and even remote in from another device of my choice. It makes the whole recovery process suck a whoooole lot less.
Depends on how you break it. Broken partitions? Sure, Gparted it is. Everything else? Most often can be fixed with a quick
arch-chrootand then undoing whatever caused the mess.So yeah, I agree with the Ventoy suggestion. Such a neat little tool that it’s earned it’s place on my key-chain.
Can’t praise ventoy enough. Brilliant little piece of kit.
My only issue with this is, I think I have had very low quality USB sticks that get corrupted putting Ventoy on them tbh.
Same. Though I moved to a 30€ 256GB USB-A + USB-C stick, which is more than enough for my ISOs and very quick to write on. And I hope it withstands a lot of write cycles too.