Brickfrog

You already tested with a standard Windows 10/11 install ISO? Put that on a bootable USB along with your exe but instead of installing you go into the recovery options and should see a way to get to the cmd prompt where you can test run that .exe. It might have the same results as Windows PE but it’s worth a try and downloading the Windows ISO is free anyway.

Worst case if you have a spare HDD/SSD you can put that into your system, temporarily install Windows 10/11 onto it (I don’t think you even need to worry about activation), run your .exe, then shutdown and swap your drives back to your normal setup and be done with it.

But yeah I get what you’re saying, ideally there’s a better way but I’m not too sure what else to suggest within Linux itself.

A little research got me to a “systemrescue” iso and that one worked fine. The live environment fired up and I was able to save all my data by mounting the partition via terminal into /mnt/mountfolder/.

Nice. I always keep an ISO of systemrescue on a bootable USB for these occasions, it’s gotten me out of jams in both Windows and Linux situations.

Not sure what to make of your issue with Ubuntu stopping from working, including the live boot, only for it to work again for you in the end. My hunch is wonky hardware but can’t really say.

I don’t know about “best” but on Android I’ve been using the K-9 mail app for years without problems. Supports multiple email accounts as well as standard IMAP/SMTP email protocols which is all I really need. The project was merged with Thunderbird so now it’s Thunderbird for Android.

source: https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbird-android

Will be curious what solution you come up with. I tried to do this with my current Debian installation but never quite got it to boot off the RAID-1 array. In the end just went without RAID on the drive with Debian installed, maybe will re-attempt next time I do an OS install. I do have mdadm RAID-1 working normally for my data drives, just not the boot drive… you technically could just do that if you want to have your RAID-1 data drives separate from your OS boot drive.

Can’t comment on the Calameres installer but the regular Debian installer does detect RAID configurations from other mdadm setups. So you could either create your RAID-1 configuration in the shell during the Debian install or even create it in another Linux boot shell before jumping into the Debian installer. e.g. booting any live Linux with mdadm in it, configure the RAID-1 there, then boot into the Debian installer - the Debian installer will know there’s a prior RAID-1 on those disks and allow you to proceed with installing on the array if you wanted.

What tripped me up afterwards was trying to get it to boot off that RAID-1 afterwards, that part is not so straightforward. The link in the other comment does go into that so maybe it’ll helpful.

They have a reputation for deleting free accounts. If you plan to use Tuta for more than a few months be sure to use their paid plans, not free.

e.g. https://lemmy.ml/post/41480556

Some ideas for the future

Xrdp fail… plain and simple…

Xrdp usually works fine, you should try to find any specific error messages or logs. Xrdp also runs a service so you could also see if the service itself is running or what it’s status is (systemctl status xrdp).

For me Xrdp did fail when I initially tried to run it. I don’t remember the exact error being produced but there was something wrong with the port number xrdp wanted to use… in the end I had to stop the service, edit /etc/xrdp/xrdp.ini and set the port to a specific port number without using vsock. xrdp by default was set to use vsock ports which wasn’t working for for me.

Set up SSH on it and make sure you’re able to connect into it while it works normally, that way when the issue occurs you can do a quick test to see if the system itself is still up and running.

I’m not on Linux Mint / Cinnamon but I’ve occasionally seen GNOME sort of hang/freeze so the screen display becomes non-responsive. After a couple of times of that happening I ended up setting up SSH on the system and configured a SSH client on my phone so I can do a SSH connection into the desktop and force-logout my user (which apparently fixes the issue and brings my main desktop back to a normal login screen). I haven’t quite figured out if it’s Gnome issues or something to do with my Nvidia GPU… though with Linux if Nvidia is involved then it’s usually Nvidia, ugh.

Also if you’re physically at the computer when it happens try unplugging/replugging in the monitor cable, maybe there’s something wonky going on there or with the display connection.

Just some ideas to help you along :)

Do I need to run a virtual machine with win11?

Yes this definitely works fine. QEMU with Virt-Manager works well, you can set up as many versions of Windows as you like. Other people use VirtualBox, VMWare Workstation, etc. These all work well enough to run Windows + standard apps like MS Office or whatever you need.

Debian by default uses the Nouveau open source driver for Nvidia GPUs and that driver does support Pascal. Debian installations will continue to work just fine even without Nvidia’s development support.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouveau_(software)

I don’t know if that’s something that can be done on Arch but in theory you can test the fallback Intel driver vs Nouveau and see which fallback you prefer.

Nouveau works well for day-to-day use and works with Wayland. I’m not a hardcore gamer but have played low-mid range Steam games without issue. I suspect it may not do well playing high end AAA games but then again if you’re rocking a Pascal era GPU it’s unlikely you’ve been playing those type of games anyway.

EDIT: Just to add, pretty sure the built in Intel iGPU on your laptop is more power efficient vs the Nvidia GPU so it may be worthwhile to disable the Nvidia GPU entirely rather than worrying about software drivers.

I’ve been using Debian with the default GNOME on an old laptop and main desktop and have been very happy with it. Coming from Windows I love that it’s way simpler and I don’t need to set a million options.

But remember the thing with Linux is you’re not locked into anything - So try GNOME or XFCE for a few weeks, then if you still want something else install and switch over to another desktop environment. You could even install all these desktop environments during the Debian install itself and just keep switching every time you log in.

Just to be sure, did you already test that the port is actually open and forwarded? e.g. with your torrent client running browse to a port test website like https://canyouseeme.org/ , https://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/open-ports/ , etc. put in your torrent client’s incoming port and check if the website can “see” your open port at your torrent client.

And the ISP (or router) itself isn’t doing anything weird to block torrents, right? In your torrent client if you click any working public torrent, click on the Trackers tab, you should see DHT as working along with whatever open trackers are on the public torrent. In other words you won’t see anything like “waiting” something (I forget the exact message you’ll see when DHT is being blocked but it’ll definitely not be working).

EDIT: Also if it’s a new ISP with new router it might have firewall rules set up that are slowing things down, something to check.

The copy protections on Blu rays are exceptionally annoying, to the extent where there is really only one closed source software – MakeMKV – that can work around them.

Not quite, RedFox formerly SlySoft (RIP) used to market their own Blu-ray ripper and it worked quite well. What it used to do is on-the-fly decryption so you’d run it in the background and could use any other software to read the decrypted Blu-ray (e.g. using Handbrake or whatever). It did also have an option to just rip to a file IIRC. Unfortunately they randomly disappeared so their software is pretty much done. (some background on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedFox)

That aside they always a competitor, DVDFab, that still exists today. Their Passkey software is the rough equivalent of what the old RedFox/SlySoft software used to do but they also sell a standalone Blu-ray ripper if that’s more your thing (see https://www.dvdfab.cn/).

But yeah, in some ways you’re stuck with MakeMKV, DVDFab, and maybe some others (?).

I’d have to dig it out but I actually bought a Blu-ray drive a while back that was on the list of drives compatible with these rippers but honestly it’s been a few years since I’ve tried using it. Most times someone else already ripped a Blu-ray I’d be interested in.

Speaking of - If anyone knows offhand, how do people do this stuff on Linux? Does the Linux version of MakeMKV work well for this and/or are there other tools (?)

Wake on LAN is a LAN feature, not WAN, so you’d need to issue that over the local LAN there at the house. You’re going to have a hard time trying to get that working over the WAN (if that’s even possible).

The other comments mentioning a scheduled boot would be a much easier/simple solution if it works for you.

But I’ll throw this in, the super basic least tech solution to this is to open a port forward to the house’s network router. Yes, I know you don’t want to do that, but it’s probably the only network device at that house that’s actually on 24/7 right? And by all means lock it down however you like. My simple method is to open the router login to a non-standard port number, with a IP whitelist, add my own home IP address to that IP whitelist, and bam you now have access to that remote home’s router for just your IP address. Log in remotely, issue a wake on LAN via the router’s own web ui, done.

It’s perfectly reasonable to make this a bit more secure if you wanted but it gets slightly more complicated - open a non-standard port for SSH access to the remote router’s SSH port that only allows SSH login with key. Generate a SSH key and share that key with yourself, then you can log in remotely to that remote house via non-standard SSH port using the SSH key (no user/passwords). From there you’d have to see if you can issue Wake on LAN on the SSH command line, or set up a SSH tunnel from that remote LAN to yours so you can proxy into the router login page and do your Wake on LAN from there. … yes I realize this got complicated :/ But you’ve got a few things to explore given your patience for tinkering with this stuff :)

Of course much of this relies on that house’s router having any of these features to enable and configure. The main takeaway here is that Wake on LAN requires something on 24/7 at that remote LAN for you to enable remote access into and issue a Wake on LAN command within that LAN. How to actually accomplish that is the tricky bit.

When I first started using GNOME the top bar was a bit off-putting but I got used to it TBH. It’s not something I think about much nowadays.

However, you actually can move it to the side or to the bottom, and/or change it in other ways, with the dash-to-panel extension so definitely check that out if the top bar is bugging you https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1160/dash-to-panel/

Windows To Go was discontinued back in 2019 so it’s not really something that has been maintained or updated for a long time

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_To_Go#Discontinuation

Apps like Rufus (Windows only) are still able to create that sort of boot USB but it’s sort of a non supported feature, wouldn’t be surprised if it just stops working one day.

On Linux Ventoy is often used for this - it does have a persistence plugin but not for Windows https://www.ventoy.net/en/plugin_persistence.html

I haven’t tested this idea, but maybe you can run a Windows VM within Linux, enable USB in it, download Rufus in it, then you can create your non-official Windows To Go boot disk that way? Could be something to try if you never find another solution.

Always good to double check, but yes, I used canyouseeme and the port is definitely open.

That means TCP should be working as expected with the current configuration. Note those port test websites are only testing TCP, not UDP.

A few menu options below the one for port forwarding

I’m not familiar with ProtonVPN configuration so can’t guide you much there, presumably if the port forwarding option only allows for one setting then maybe it’s doing both TCP/UDP? I dunno…

there’s another for configuring the connection as OpenVPN(TCP), OpenVPN(UDP), or Wireguard.

Don’t worry about that one, that’s for configuring the VPN client you will be using to connect to the VPN server. It should not affect the port forward itself unless ProtonVPN is doing something odd.

I’ve had other issues in the past and Transmission’s internal port testing thing

Yeah I wouldn’t rely on that, the internet port test inside the torrent client isn’t always reliable. But in theory it should show up as open all the time if you have a stable open port :/

Could I be missing a step with the trackers?

Doubt it being a tracker issue, they update themselves on their own schedule usually.

I also have a client I’m trying to test uploading to, but it can’t seem to connect to the seedbox

Maybe should have asked this before - can the test torrent client see that there is a seed on the torrent? Or does it load the torrent but just isn’t seeing any seeds or peers at all? The open trackers take a bit to update themselves with a new torrent hash so sometimes it just takes a bit before the torrent client sees a seed and begins downloading from it.

Just to double-check did you already test that the open port is actually open and connectable from the internet? e.g. use any port test website & see if it can connect to your seedbox Transmission open port e.g. https://www.canyouseeme.org/ , https://portchecker.co/ or similar.

Also, not sure how the open port itself was configured but make sure it is open for both TCP and UDP traffic if you needed to specify that during your firewall setup.

Like some of the other comments, if you really need a DE then maybe give XFCE or LXQt a try. The distro itself won’t matter too much in your scenario.

I do have an old laptop that has run Debian/Ubuntu + Gnome fine, not at all fast but usable for my needs. Mines has 4 GB RAM, get the feeling that going under 4 GB may be a bit much.

Otherwise Linux is perfectly usable without a DE if you’re willing to stick to the terminal for all your usage.

There is an Linux compatible open source player being developed called fooyin (https://fooyin.org/) heavily inspired by foobar2000. When I tried it out a few months back it was still a bit rough for day-to-day use but it could eventually become a good alternative for people that miss the foobar2000 style player.

Pretty sure Strawberry does everything you are looking for.

re: #1 I kind of had the same issue but with multiple music folders, most of the default music apps only let you use one folder. Strawberry lets you add as many music folders as you like, I’ve been happy with it.

On Windows I used to use foobar2000 which was great, and in theory I could get it running under Linux, but I’d rather just use something coded for Linux compatibility from the start.