I recently had to rescue the SSD of a data science PhD student. While dumping the files, I noticed that he had a dozen copies of identically named large CSV files (I mean 20+ gigabytes each). I compared their checksums - they were copies of the same raw data file, just sitting there in the downloads folder. When I asked, he said he’d made several backups of the project. Including the data.

Unfortunately Windows somehow fucked up the partition table and took the “backups” with it.

If they’re willing to pay the +100% weekend overtime*, I’m happy to do it. If they’ve opened a ticket, that is.

* contingent on living in a country with actual labour laws

A boring release is the best kind of release. It means that most of the effort went into stability, compatibility, and bugfixes.

If you want updates to be exciting, install Arch, but only update it once every six months. You can even run bets on which system inroduces some breaking change that forces you to reach into its guts.

Server admins across the world now consider you a threat.

“Did you open a ticket? No? Then it didn’t happen. Have a good weekend.”

“If you’re not comin to my birthday party, then I’m uninviting you!”

Oh, I’ve seen that before.

“Hey AI, please come up with an efficient mass transit vehicle for the modern age.”
“Trains.”
“Um… no, we need a modern approach that maximizes throughput and–”
“Trains.”
“No. How about pods with people inside–”
“On cheap infrastructure with low friction steel wheels and coupled together. Trains.”
“It’s not letting us push our agenda, this isn’t going to work. Hey, other AI…”

System Settings -> Input&Output -> Accessibility -> Shake Cursor

I choose Skynet. Can I choose Skynet?

When I was on Hyprland, I had to start Firefox with XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=kde while having both the KDE and GTK implementations of XDP.

You mean… de cuckstoel is free?

It’s not about looks, it’s about functionality. I could add a hundred lines of CSS to make it sparkle without touching Javascript. I could think of a dozen convenience features that would require Javascript, but none that, if disabled, would prevent the search bar from functioning as a search bar.

  <form method="GET" action="https://duckduckgo.com/">
    <input name="q" type="text"/>
    <button type="submit">Go</button>
  </form>

This is a fully functional search bar. This is all it needs to be. It doesn’t need Javascript, only if you want suggestions.

The last time I checked, Google still works if you simply pass your query in the URL using the q variable. Google has no need to enforce Javascript.

I’ve done my tests, and it looks like I may have been incorrect.

Point 1. While I was right to suspect the : character, I discovered that it is permitted in NTFS and only reserved in Windows. When an NTFS volume is mounted in Linux, it only becomes a problem if the windows_names option is used. Sometimes it is used, sometimes it isn’t, and I don’t know when.

Point 2. The other thing I found is that Wine only works if the wineprefix is owned by the user. NTFS doesn’t understand Unix-style file ownership and permissions, so it must determine the uid, gid, and umask when the volume is mounted. When mounted with OP’s fstab entry, it will default to root, so every file (including the wineprefixes) within the volume will appear as being owned by root, which prevents Wine from starting.

This might also explain why mounting the drive dynamically worked, as it probably used udisks2 to mount it as the user.

The solution may be as simple as specifying the uid and gid mount options. In a system with a single user, they should both be 1000, but you can check them by running echo $UID $GID.

The modified fstab entry should be:

UUID=E01A2CEC1A2CC180 /mnt/games ntfs nofail,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 3

This will present all files as being owned by the user, and should allow wine to run.

Point 3. That being said, mixing Windows and Linux is still not a good idea. I don’t know what will happen if you create wineprefixes on NTFS. Windows might see the invalid filenames and shit itself. I tried doing it on a new NTFS volume and Windows wouldn’t even mount it.

If you really want to keep the game files on the NTFS volume, you might have better luck trying your own symlink fuckery. If you have the Steam library on the NTFS device, you could try moving the .../SteamLibrary/steamapps/compatdata directory to a Linux filesystem, then creating a symlink in compatdata’s place that points to the moved directory. This method moves the problematic files outside the volume.

The second method involves bringing the game files on the NTFS volume into the default Steam library on the Linux filesystem using a bind mount – a way to mount a directory at a different mount point. In essence, this replaces the .../steamapps/common directory with that on the NTFS volume, and avoids creating wineprefixes inside the NTFS filesystem in the first place.

• Mount the NTFS volume using the fstab entry above.
• Assuming that you have the Steam stuff in their default locations, execute sudo mount --bind /mnt/games/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common ~/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common to create the bind mount manually.
• Or use the equivalent fstab entry:

/mnt/games/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common /home/salty/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/common none defaults,bind 0 0

Not really, because some files in the wineprefix will have invalid names.

When an NTFS volume is mounted, it implicitly uses the windows_names option, which restricts the character set that can be used in filenames, in order to preserve compatibility with Windows. The specific character in question is the colon – it is permitted by NTFS, but it’s a reserved character in Windows, which means it is also restricted by the windows_names mount option. This prevents Wine from creating its c: and z: symlinks, which are required for Wine to operate.

You could try some symlink fuckery, like linking .../steamapps/common to the NTFS drive, since all of the problematic files are located outside of that, in .../steamapps/compatdata. Or you could mount the NTFS volume directly to the common directory. If you do, I’d love to hear the results.

Relevant issue: https://github.com/storaged-project/udisks/issues/713

NTFS doesn’t support symlinks

It does. You can create them on Windows using the mklink command. It creates a file link if no switch is passed, directory link with /D, directory junction (different thing) with /J, and hardlink with /H. The ntfs-3g driver has complete support for links.

Some Windows programs, like the Scoop package manager, make extensive use of symlinks and directory junctions.

> “Boatlights-tan”
> red starboard
> green port

Something ain’t right.

Promises from a for-profit company don’t mean shit. How many times have you seen the “we’ve heard you and we’ll do better next time” routine, only for next time to be the same or worse? They’d promise you the pissing Sun if it meant more dollar signs.

They’re empty words. No company will put out a statement saying “we fucked up, we’re sorry, it’s going to happen again”. Until Mozilla can prove through actions that the issue is fixed, Hill is correct in distrusting them.

Mozilla can’t be trusted to host the addon, so the author is taking on the responsibility of hosting it himself. How is that his fault and not Mozilla’s?

Whether Mozilla acted out of malice or incompetence is irrelevant. The report was false and the findings were incorrect, they have to be held responsible either way.

They’re definitely both used. When a program is started in a Wine environment, those symlinks are the only way it can access the filesystem: game files in .../steamapps/common through z:; settings and saved games (normally in the Windows user’s home directory) through c:.

You can run wine explorer.exe to open a Windows Explorer implementation and check out what the Linux filesystem looks like in Windows. You can even add new lettered drives using winecfg, although I wouldn’t try it with Steam’s prefixes.