So we are all familiar at some point with the advice to use the command

dd if=image.iso of=/dev/sdx

or similar. People almost religiously think of dd as the tool to do this. It certainly can do the job, but not only is it really bad at it (mostly because it doesn't let the kernel automatically select a good block size), but it is also infamous for having a very fragile command syntax that is easy to typo and destroy your data with. dd wasn't actually written as a disk copying tool and is meant to be used as a data conversion tool. People using it to copy images to disks without doing any sort of conversion are kind of just abusing the fact that it reads one file in and writes another out. A lot of people don't know this, but on Linux/UNIX systems you can interact with block devices like they are normal files. As a result it's generally faster and safer to do something like

cp image.iso /dev/sdx

instead. People frequently uselessly risk using dd in places where ordinary file commands like cat and cp work fine. Some of you nerds probably already knew this but I want to spread it because people recommending dd is way too common.

Also, regardless of what commands you are using, when you finish doing anything involving writing to block devices always remember to run the command sync to make sure the kernel has actually written the data to the disk and isn't waiting to later.

  • fuschiaRuler [she/her]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I appreciate the tip. Maybe i can find a junk laptop to fiddle with on craigslist or something. Any suggestions on the distro?

      • the_river_cass [she/her]
        ·
        4 years ago

        gentoo is much, much easier these days, lol. it's a mostly scripted install process you can bail out of to customize whatever you like. the only reason I suggest arch over it is that emerge is much more complex to learn than pacman and the archwiki is the best linux documentation on the internet (from a user perspective)

          • the_river_cass [she/her]
            ·
            4 years ago

            I mean, I'm comparing it to compiling on a first gen athlon 64 from 2004 so not really? lol. there's also build caches for most everything in the basic install process already.

              • the_river_cass [she/her]
                ·
                4 years ago

                I wouldn't bother, there's literally no advantage. nixos is a much more interesting source based distribution because it largely delivers on its promise of a fully reproducible installation - meaning you configure stuff once and (if you've pinned versions correctly), you will get the exact same results on any other computer you take that configuration to.

                      • dpg [he/him]
                        ·
                        4 years ago

                        Guix is usable on something like a thinkpad IME. It's really fun to learn Guile Scheme too and I ended up submitting patches.

    • the_river_cass [she/her]
      ·
      4 years ago

      yea, I second arch. way back in the day, a stage 1 gentoo install was the most thorough way to learn but it took literally two weeks of beating your head into a wall and watching code fail to compile. your biggest problem now is that arch actually automates a lot of the install process - but enough of the core is still exposed that there's plenty to learn.

      also, I suggest a VM. easier to work with than a whole separate laptop.

    • Irockasingranite [she/her]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I'd say go with arch, it has a really detailed guide on the wiki for setting everything up.