So I decided to give Linux a try again.

Created live usb. Prepared myself to go through all the hassles at the beginning.

Booted in live USB. I can't see mouse cursor.

Searched in google, apparently a common problem with GTX 1070/1080 graphics cards.

Installed proprietary nvidia drivers with keyboard only. Took me about 20 minutes.

Finally managed to get the mouse cursor and install ubuntu. Time to boot and smell the fresh air of linux again.

Sound card doesn't work. Even the integrated mobo sound card doesn't work. Looked for a solution, found the bug in lunchpad but not solution yet. Everyone recommending to buy an external sound card.

I can't code without music. Decided to remove linux.

Booted back to Windows and removed linux partition. That fucked up my bootloader although I installed linux's efi loader completely separately.

Now I am sitting in front of my computer, with black grub screen, while trying to make a Windows 10 usb with my 7 years old broken laptop.

Next time I see a rant about Windows 10 that glorifies linux, I swear I'm gonna smack your face over standard TCP/IP

The year is 2025
vlcInstall.exe
"You already have videos, the trusted and safe media player for windows 10"
AtomInstaller.exe
"You already have vscode, the better and lighter editor for windows 10"
SteamInstaller.exe
"You already have Microsoft solitare, a fun, better game for windows 10"
*googles c++ tutorials*
"Try c#, safer and robust language for developers, oh and did we forget to mention use bing?"
*downloads arch iso*
"This file has been marked malicious by windows defender. Oh and we updated your bios to allow only windows bootloader. You're welcome."

I finally got it working! Now I have a foundation for a kernel and an uefi bootloader written in pure Rust

Today was a good day :)

In my college days i was designing a bootloader for avr microcontroller , i had the idea to flash code wirelessly to avr over bluetooth and also cross compile the compiler for android device so that you can code on android, every thing went well just one thing didn't, i saw that code of certain size is executing properly , greater than that size gives me wired outputs so i have to dump hex from the avr (that is flashed the by bootloader) and compaire it with the original hex of code it got messy as you can see, most fun part of this bug is that error can be anywhere cross compiler may be fucked up , the bootloader may be fucked up , or it may be my bluetooth module , after 14 hours of staring at the hex code i figured out the mess in bootloader instruction that was changing the page address for flashing .

when it worked it was 3am in night i literally burst into tears of joy next day bought myself a cake to celebrate

First things after buying a new phone:
Unlock bootloader, install Lineage OS

So this happened a few days ago. I always want to root my smartphones for that little bit more control.

*Put's new smartphone into fastboot mode*
*Tries to flash root zip onto it*
"You have to OEM unlock the bootloader first"
*OEM unlocks the bootloader*
*Tries to flash but fails*
*Tries to reboot*
Phone: "The bootloader has been tampered with, the device will boot in 5 seconds".
*Screen just hangs there for ages*
FUCK.
*Tries to enter fastboot again to OEM re-lock the bootloader*
*Fastboot appears to startup RIGHT AFTER THE FUCKING ERROR MESSAGE so can't boot into that anymore*.
FUCKING FUCK.
Hmm... TWRP is still installed...
*Tries to flash some stuff through TWRP*
"The zip file you are trying to flash is corrupt".
FUCK MY FUCKING LIFE.
*Connects phone to Linux for adb flashing*
*Nothing happens after half an hour of trying*
*Connects phone to ancient windows 7 laptop*
*Laptop doesn't even RECOGNISE the phone although all drivers are installed*.
*Le me about to completely lose my fucking mind*
*Connects phone desperately with Linux again*
*Phone is recognised right away but the SPL flash tool can't detect it*
*Tries to put it into fastboot again*
*Fails for about an hour*
*phone in charging mode again*
*Presses the power button for a last, desperate attempt*
*SPL flash suddenly recognises the phone*
FLASHING
FLASHING
FLASHING
DONE.
*Android boots again like nothing happened*

I can use it again like normal but the No-Root firewall is draining my battery like crazy.
That was one hell of a journey though!

Dear online tutorials,

Bootloader != Operating system

Regards,

Lxmcf

I signed up for a 3 day course on c++ for revision purposes since I haven't used it in years, it was there, so why not.
So we get an email about having to install linux mint beforehand. Naturally, having ubuntu installed, i just ask if I can roll with that. And the answer is:
"Yes you just need to install the compiler, but then you won't get the credit point for the course, since you have not completed all tasks."
And an instruction was attached innthe general email on to how to create a bootable usb stick with windows and set up the partition (!) for a dualboot system for like 10 gigs of linux.
Bruh.
Da fuq.
I'm coming for the c++ not the linux. Also how do you think I've got ubuntu running in the first place? I get it the course is for beginners probably but still.
Also, after reading the instructions and knowing Windows 10 i can see bootloader issues incoming...
Was looking forward to that course now I'm not so sure. 🤔
(Sidenote: i don't care about the point I could get ftom this)

I'll use this topic to segue into a related (lonely) story befitting my mood these past weeks.

This is entire story going to sound egotistical, especially this next part, but it's really not. (At least I don't think so?)

As I'm almost entirely self-taught, having another dev giving me good advice would have been nice. I've only known / worked with a few people who were better devs than I, and rarely ever received good advice from them.

One of those better devs was my first computer science teacher. Looking back, he was pretty average, but he held us to high standards and gave good advice. The two that really stuck with me were: 1) "save every time you've done something you don't want to redo," and 2) "printf is your best debugging friend; add it everywhere there's something you want to watch." Probably the best and most helpful advice I've ever received 😊

I've seen other people here posting advice like "never hardcode" or "modularity keeps your code clean" -- I had to discover these pretty simple concepts entirely on my own. School (and later college) were filled with terrible teachers and worse students, and so were almost entirely useless for learning anything new.

The only decent dev I knew had brilliant ideas (genetic algorithms, sandboxing, ...) before they were widely used, but could rarely implement them well because he was generally an idiot. (Idiot sevant, I think? Definitely the idiot part.) I couldn't stand him. Completely bypassing a ridiculously long story, I helped him on a project to build his own OS from scratch; we made very impressive progress, even to this day. Custom bootloader, hardware interfacing, memory management, (semi) sandboxed processes, gui, example programs ...; we were in highschool. I'm still surprised and impressed with what we accomplished.

But besides him, almost every other dev I met was mediocre. Even outside of school, I went so many years without having another competent dev to work with. I went through various jobs helping other dev(s) on their projects (or rewriting them), learning new languages/frameworks almost every time: php, pascal, perl, zend, js, vb, rails, node, .... I learned new concepts occasionally (which was wonderful) but overall it was just tedious and never paid well because I was too young to be taken seriously (and female, further exacerbating it). On the bright side, it didn't dwindle my love for coding, and I usually spent my evenings playing with projects of my own.

The second dev (and one one of the best I've ever met) went by Novo. His approach to a game engine reminded me of General Relativity: Everything was modular, had a rich inheritance tree, and could receive user input at any point along said tree. A user could attach their view/control to any object. (Computer control methods could be attached in this way as well.) UI would obviously change depending on how the user could interact and the number of objects; admins could view/monitor any of these. Almost every object / class of object could talk to almost everything else. It was beautiful. I learned so much from his designs. (Honestly, I don't remember the code at all, and that saddens me.) There were other things, too, but that one amazed me the most.

I havent met anyone like him ever again.

Anyway, I don't know if I can really answer this week's question. I definitely received some good advice while initially learning, but past that it's all been through discovering things on my own.

It's been lonely. ☹

So my friend was in a hurry when she was setting up the passocde for her phone and later she forgot the code.
So she takes it to the service center.

SC guy: Ma'am we have to do bla bla bla. And you will lose your data. It will cost you around $10.

She just came back and later gave me the phone.
*unlocks bootloader *
*flashes a custom recovery*
*delete passcode file*
Phone is now unlocked with all the data intact.

PS: I got a small treat at McDonald's. 😋

I created a fake bootloader for my co-workers computer.

it's your problem, luser!
btw, i use arch

"Time to install Arch Linux!"
*8 hours later*
"Back to Open Suse!"

Repeat every 4-5 months.

Seriously, I would LOVE to get Arch running on my laptop, but everytime I try to something goes wrong, be it bootloader, audio, cooptimus drivers, undetected network card, window manager going crazy, etc etc etc... and I simply end giving up and reinstalling my backup.

Someday, Arch, someday...

My Sunday Morning until afternoon. FML. So I was experiencing nightly reboots of my home server for three days now. Always at 3:12am strange thing. Sunday morning (10am ca) I thought I'd investigate because the reboots affected my backups as well. All the logs and the security mails said was that some processes received signal 11. Strange. Checked the periodics tasks and executed every task manually. Nothing special. Strange. Checked smart status for all disks. Two disks where having CRC errors. Not many but a couple. Oh well. Changing sata cables again 🙄. But those CRC errors cannot be the reason for the reboots at precisely the same time each night. I noticed that all my zpools got scrubbed except my root-pool which hasn't been scrubbed since the error first occured. Well, let's do it by hand: zpool scrub zroot....Freeze. dafuq. Walked over to the server and resetted. Waited 10 minutes. System not up yet. Fuuu...that was when I first guessed that Sunday won't be that sunny after all. Connected monitor. Reset. Black screen?!?! Disconnected all disks aso. Reset. Black screen. Oh c'moooon! CMOS reset. Black screen. Sigh. CMOS reset with a 5 minute battery removal. And new sata cable just in cable. Yes, boots again. Mood lightened... Now the system segfaults when importing zroot. Good damnit. Pulled out the FreeBSD bootstick. zpool import -R /tmp zroot...segfault. reboot. Read-only zroot import. Manually triggering checksum test with the zdb command. "Invalid blckptr type". Deep breath now. Destroyed pool, recreated it. Zfs send/recv from backup. Some more config. Reboot. Boots yeah ... Doesn't find files??? Reboot. Other error? Undefined symbols???? Now I need another coffee. Maybe I did something wrong during recovery? Not very likely but let's do it again...recover-recover. different but same horrible errors. What in the name...? Pulled out a really old disk. Put it in, boots fine. So it must be the disks. Walked around the house and searched for some new disks for a new 2 disk zfs root mirror to replace the obviously broken disks. Found some new ones even. Recovery boot, minimal FreeBSD Install for bootloader aso. Deleted and recreated zroot, zfs send/recv from backup. Set bootfs attribute, reboot........
It works again. Fuckit, now it is 6pm, I still haven't showered. Put both disks through extensive tests and checked every single block. These disks aren't faulty. But for some reason they froze my system in a way so that I had to reset my BIOS and they had really low level data errors....? I Wonder if those disks have a firmware problem? So that was most of my Sunday. Nice, isn't it? But hey: calm sea won't make a good sailor, right?

Huawei will shut down Bootloader unlocker Site = Dead Brand for me!

Sorry but this is censoring. Sure Stock Android matured over the years, but ROOT IS STILL A THING!

I've I buy a device, I also wanna have full rule over it.

Oh fucking Huawei.
Fuck you.
Inventory:
- Honor 6x (BLN-L22C675)
- Has EMUI4.1 Marshmallow
- Cousin brother 'A' (has bricking XP!)
- Uncle 'K'
- Has Mac with Windows VM
Goal:
- Stock as LineageOS / AOSP

Procedure (fucking seriously):
- Find XDA link to root H6X
- Go to Huawei page and fill out form
- Receive and use bootloader code
- Find latest TWRP
- Flash latest TWRP
- TWRP not working? Bootloops
- XDA search "H6X boot to recovery"
- Find and try modded TWRP
- TWRP fails, no bootloop
- Find & flash TWRP 3.1.0
- Yay! TWRP works
- Find and download LineageOS and SuperSU
- Flash via TWRP
- Yay! Success.
- Attempt boot
- Boot fails. No idea why
- Go back to TWRP
- TWRP gives shitload of errors
"cannot mount /data, storage etc."
- Feel fucked up
- Notice that userdata partition exists,
but FSTAB doesn't take
- Remembers SuperSU modded boot
image and FSTABS!
- Fuck SuperSU
- Attempt to mod boot image
- Doesn't work (modded successfully
but no change)
- Discover Huawei DLOAD
Installer for "UPDATE.APP" OTAs
Note: Each full OTA is 2+ GB zipped
- Find, download, fail on 4+ OTAs
- Discover "UPDATE.APP Extractor"
Runs on Windows
Note: UPDATE.APP custom format
Different per H6X model
- Uses 'K''s VM to test
- My H6X model does not have
a predefined format
- Process to get format requires
TWRP, which is not working
- FAIL HERE
- Discover "Firmware Finder"
Windows app to find Huawei
firmwares
- Tries 'K''s VM
- Fails with 1 OTA
- Downloads another firmware ZIP
- Unzips and tries to use OTA
- Works?!
- Boots successfully?!
- Seems to have EMUI 5.0 Nougat
- Downloads, flashes TWRP
- TWRP not working AGAIN?
- Go back to XDA page
- Find that TWRP on EMUI 5 - NO
- Find rollbacks for EMUI5 -> EMUI4
- Test, fail 2-4 times (Massive OTAs)
- DLOAD accepts this one?!!!
- I HAVE ORIG AGAIN!!!
- Re-unlock and reflash TWRP
- Realise that ROMs aren't working on
EMUI 4.1; Find TWRPs for EMUI5
- Find and fail with 2-3 OTAs
Note: Had removed old OTAs for
space on Chromebook (32GB)
- In anger, flash one with TWRP
instead of DLOAD (which checks
compatability)
- Works! Same wasn't working with
DLOAD
- Find and flash a custom TWRP
as old one still exists (not wiped in
flash)
- Try flashing LineageOS
- LineageOS stuck in boot
- Try flashing AOSP
- Same
- Try flashing Resurruction Remix
- Same
- Realise that need stock EMUI5
vendor
- Realise that the firmware I installed
wasn't for my device so not working
- FUCK NO MORE LARGE DLs
- Try another custom TWRP
- Begin getting '/cust mounting' errs
- Try reflashing EMUI5 with TWRP
- Doesn't work
- Try DLOADing EMUI5
- Like before, incompatability
- DLOAD EMUI4
- Reunlock and reflash TWRP
- WRITE THIS AS A BREAK
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

So, I finally gave in and installed the unofficial LineageOS ROM for the Google Pixel on my phone. I got tired of waiting for the official ROM. It was quite an adventure. I have to say the most time-consuming part of the whole process was getting my bootloader unlocked (because my Pixel came from Verizon.) I did have a little adventure after the installation though. I opened the devRant app for the first time and was instantly blinded by the default light theme.

TL;DR I now have LineageOS running on my Google Pixel, and I'm quite happy about it.

170 hours to go to press a fucking button to unlock the bootloader.
Why the fuck xiaomi makes everyone wait 360 hours before allow users to mod their phone?

Fuck xiaomi.

Installing Mint as dual boot today. Hope I don't mess my bootloader to hardly 😂

Xiaomi makes you wait for 360 hours before they can allow you to unlock their phone's bootloader! Now I'm just seated here dealing with bloatware as I wait for 2 weeks to do a 30 second operation. It's 2018, come on!

bro just learn C bro I promise it's all smooth sailing bro haha lol just take up HTML with CSS bro its a piece of cake bro what bro lol just start coding up differential equations with numpy library haha its so simple bro just start with Ruby bro it will take only couple days bro what lol bro take this aeronautical course on how to code an airplane simulation bro its so simple bro just start algorithms on cryptography bro its so easy i cant bro just start writing drivers for printers bro haha lol just start writing a bootloader for a new Linux distro bro lol haha easy bro just make a billion dollar company bro haha its so simple.
keep going bro haha invent your own JS framework over a billion existing ones haha bro typescript is so easy bro lol what u say take up redis bro go from the first command bro learn mongodb and mysql together bro its so simple.

but bro don't try to master JS bro .. u will regret it forever bro.

imagine having kernel memory leaks in 2020

AT&T or Huawei, whichever, pushed an update for my already-struggling-to-exist phone that made the kernel memory leak go from 480KB/hr avg to 22.5MB/hr avg. When my free RAM is never under 50% of 2GB after the kernel starts loading other shit and i'm able to express free RAM, at any time in use, in megs, with 8 bits... this means my phone crashes, with no apps running aside from a trimmed list of stock apps, every 3-4 hours due to running out of RAM. The only usable (read: not R/O because unrooted) swapfile is located on a tmpfs, so it's completely fucking useless (and eats another 100MB of RAM that I could be using for LITERALLY anything else, that's like another 3 hours of full idle between crashes) and I can't unlock the bootloader to fix any of this as Huawei no longer hands out keys and it'd take 7 years or so to brute (32-bit @ 10/sec)

tl;dr: fuck

Took me longer than I wanted to, but I finally finished ch6 in LFS 8.3 :) I officially installed all the necessary packages from source and backed everything up (in case I screw up again I'll only have to start from ch7 xD). Now it's on to configuring the system and bootloader and hopefully booting into my new LFS system :D

Fun fact!

Xiaomi has a restriction where you're only allowed a bootloader unlock key one week after you've requested it. No, not a week after you've bought the phone. Not a week after you created an account and generated so much usage data that it would be stupid to doubt you're a genuine user.
No, you have to wait one week after installing their fucking desktop app and getting past some arbitrary point in the process.

Seriously, how much shit can this company pull with a straight face? At this point they're just sabotaging me, it's not even for any reason.

> phone has OEM unlock disabled
> phone is vulnerable to like 300 race conditions
> reboot phone, get to menu as fast as possible
> sure enough, what do you fucking know, option is unblocked for a split second if I get to and open the dev settings perfectly
> manage to pull it off again
> SETTING STAYS ON AFTER REBOOTING we have ourselves a winner

it's never this easy, i have yet to check if it has a key or not, will keep you posted, but if this all works this will have been the most retardedly-simple unauthorized bootloader unlock ever

!(!(!(!(!(!(!(!rant)))))))
My new HTC smartphone hates me.
First it started to shut down all of the sudden yesterday night, when I was solving quadratic equations on my laptop.
I thought that it might be due to low battery. So I have restarted it. After putting itself into a bootloop for 4 start sequences, it was able to fully start to the page where it told me to enter the security pin to decrypt my files. I also had 30 attempts left. Like a ransomware.

I was like "tf I didn't set anything up".
So I decided to use my first attempt as I had 30 attempts left.
I entered the pin (I can swear that it's correct) and it told me that it has to wipe the /data partition.

I did that. I pressed that button. After waiting for 30 minutes I gave up and rebooted into the bootloader.
Bootloader -> Download Mode -> wipe /data (stock rom + stock recovery btw.)

Some error with "e: mount /cache failed[...]e: mount /data failed"
So, I tried using the adb sideload - no success.
Fastbooted into RUU Mode - HTC keeps rebooting itself into the RUU Mode - no success

Tried to flash the firmware and twrp recovery from Download mode - no success
Then I tried to flash all these things from the sd card - no success

Searched for revolutionary (I know this from my old HTC sensation device).
It wasn't big of any help.

Then someone on xda recommended htcDev (htc's <b>developer-friendly</b> lol site)
I followed every step. Everything seemed to be okay.
I got to the last step.
I needed to get my encrypted token by entering "fastboot oem get_identifier_token" to be able to submit it to HTC, and after they would send me an e-Mail with an .bin file that would let me unlock the bootloader to be able to flash my way through all this headache giving fucking piece of dog shit!

But since I can't back to the phone settings to select the bootloader activation box that would let me get my token... but nah.

FML

------------
Sent by using the devRant web app (:\)

I'm working on a laptop in the shop and Explorer crashes. I try restarting it, and get RPC endpoint call errors. On reboot, I get this.

Russian roulette but 3 will probably crash instead of 1.

Today was very good day for me:
one of my friend said he is going to buy new phone as his older phone is unrepairable (Android failed to boot). I took the phone installed twrp - unlocked bootloader and then flashed cynogen os and boom! android booted up.
Now they think me as a genius and says i wrote that Android OS, i tried saying its just a hack due to open source but they still think me as a HACKER! :)

Going out on a limb here... have any of you done any bare-metal phone programming (not counting compiling like AOSP and such, like totally arbitrary code at boot-time, or bootloader coding, ideally) or know someone that has? A friend got bit by a bad iOS app on a jailbroken iPhone 8 (checkra1n, so no unsigned firms or anything) that has installed a bad iCloud lock on the device, and I need checkm8 shellcode to zero most of if not all of the NAND to get rid of it (since an iTunes restore preserves that data) and I can't figure out jack shit about how any of this works, since ARM isn't strict on what goes where in the address space or how to access hardware.

You know, I really like my Redmi 4x. It's a nice and inexpensive phone and perfect for me. Now I wanted to get the most out of my phone by rooting it, which was going to be easy.

I thought. And lord almighty was I wrong.

First of all, to even get to root it you have to unlock the bootloader. To do that you have to use a tool that they've made. Good! An official way to do so would surely be good, I thought. But to actually use the tool you have to be logged in to their service on both the tool and your phone. Then, and get this, you have to submit a written application as to why you would want to unluck the bootloader.

Ohh but it didn't stop there. I did so and months passed without me getting any info from them what so ever. When trying the tool it would just tell me that they hadn't reviewed my application.

Today I tried again, and something new happened. It told me that I hadn't synced my accounts. Which I promptly did because it's progress.

I tried for what should be the final time, aaaand I get this. This according to the forums means I have to wait 72 hours to be able to do it.

But it's progress, right?

Uuugggghhhh

Xiaomi's bootloader unlock procedure is So. Fucking. Tedious. I have no words... oh wait, I do. HIDING THE PERMISSION BEHIND A HUNDRED DEVICE-SIDE SWITCHES WON'T MAKE IT ANY SAFER, IT WILL ONLY MAKE MODDERS ANGRY. Why do you need a third switch besides OEM unlock and USB debugging anyway? If I toggled OEM unlock it's obvious what I'm trying to do and every other option should change to comply with that intent. Don't roll your own Android if you know fuckall about UX.

My Win10 bootloader ate grub so whenever I attempted to boot Debian, it would skip to Windows. So I reinstalled grub. Now Windows won't boot and the partition is locked in hybrid mode. :/

Emacs is my operating system and Linux is it's bootloader.

Fucking Huawei have stopped giving out codes for unlocking the bootloader of their devices. You can't even get one by messaging their support.

Now you can't even root Huawei phones anymore unless you pay for some very sketchy looking software.

Fuck this

So I was trying to root my Xperia Z2, starting by unlocking the bootloader. I rushed through the confirmation boxes to get the code, I entered it on fastboot... And realized I haven't made a backup. Phone restored to factory state. At least I had saved my photos on the SD card, but all the files, settings, configs and apps were gone along with my IM conversation database that I hadn't backed up for a month.

And I still haven't finished rooting that device.

Laying in bed at 1 AM unable to sleep so of course my brain is going wild and trying to convince me that learning Assembly and C to make my own bootloader and OS would be a good idea... Could be fun, think it's worth the shots and giggles?

Thanks windows for wiping my bootloader after I having to reinstall you. Idk what I'd do without you.

An alternative OS for phones able to be installed super simply without flashing or unlocking the bootloader, similar to how easy it was to jailbreak am iPhone years ago. It would also have a focus on privacy and the ability to turn off and on as much functionality as the user wants

I was scared shitless while installing the windows creator, that it might shit on my grub like the anniversary update did! I had to chroot, reinstall bootloader, and run mkinitcpio to rebuild boot and kernel images. But thankfully everything went on smoothly this time!

I've had a Xiaomi Mi 8 for a few months now. Although I'm impressed by what I got for the amount I paid (a phone that cost about $250 for 6GB RAM, Snapdragon 845, Android 9 and premium build quality is quite a steal), it definitely comes with a consequence.

MIUI (specifically MIUI 11) is godawful. It is single-handedly the worst Android ROM I've ever used since my shitty Android 2.2 phone back around 2010. If you're gonna buy a Xiaomi phone, plan to install Lineage OS on it (but even that's a pain which I'll explain why later).

- Navigation buttons don't hide while watching a video.

Why? God only knows. The ONLY way to bypass without root this is to use its garbage fullscreen mode with gestures, which is annoying as all hell.

- 2 app info pages?

Yeah, the first one you can access just by going to its disaster of a settings app, apps, manage apps and tap on any one.

The 2nd one you can access through the app info button in any 3rd party launcher. Try this: Download Nova launcher, go to the app drawer, hold on any app and tap "app info", and you'll see the 2nd one.

Basically, instead of modifying Android's FOSS source code, they made a shitty overlay. These people are really ahead of their time.

- Can only set lock screen wallpapers using the stock Gallery app

It's not that big an issue, until it is, when whatever wallpaper app you're using only allows you to set the wallpaper and not download them. I think this is both a fuckup on Xiaomi and (insert wallpaper app name here), but why Xiaomi can't include this basic essential feature that every other Android ROM ever made has is beyond me.

- Theming on MIUI 11 is broken

Why do they even bother having a section to customize the boot animation and status bar when there's not one goddamn theme that supports it? At this point you're only changing the wallpaper and icon pack which you can do on any Android phone ever. Why even bother?

They really, REALLY want to be Apple.

Just look at their phones. They're well designed and got good specs, but they don't even care anymore about being original. The notch and lack of a headphone jack aren't features, they're tremendous fuckups by the dead rotting horse known as Apple that died when Steve Jobs did.

Xiaomi tries to build a walled garden around an inherently customizable OS, and the end result is a warzone of an Android ROM that begs for mercy from its creator. Launchers integrate horribly (Does any power user actually use anything that isn't Nova or Microsoft launcher?), 3rd party themes and customization apps need workarounds, some apps don't work at all. People buy from Xiaomi to get a high end budget Android phone at the price of some ads and data collection, not a shitter iOS wannabe.

They really, REALLY want you to have a sim card

If you don't have a sim card and you're using your phone for dev stuff, you're a 2nd class citizen to Xiaomi. Without one, you can't:

- Install adb through adb
- Write to secure settings
- Unlock your bootloader and get away from this trash Android ROM

What's the point? Are they gonna shadow ban you? Does anyone contact them to unlock their bootloader saying "yeah I wanna use a custom rom to pirate lizard porn and buy drugs"? They made this 1000000000x harder than it needs to be for no reason whatsoever. Oh yeah and you gotta wait like a week or something for them to unlock it. How they fucked up this bad is beyond me.

So yeah. Xiaomi. Great phones, atrocious OS.

!Rant
I bought a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge from my cousin for $450. I then proceeded to root it and everything was fine for a week or so before my phone went into an infinite boot loop after an OTA update.

In the process of trying to fix it, I accidentally flashed a bootloader, unaware that Samsung has the bootloader locked. As a result, I had a completely bricked phone.

I mean legit bricked. No buttons with work and the screen remained shut and I couldn't flash anything over it again to try to repair it. I couldn't even put the phone into recovery mode. I now had the world's most expensive paperweight.

However, I managed to convince Samsung to repair it for me for free! I told them that the phone just stopped responding after an OTA update from them, which isn't so far from the truth.

I only ever had to flash things on the phone to begin with because of their update. Honestly, I wouldn't has had to deal with this problem, and neither would Samsung, if they just didn't lock the damn bootloader! Why are these companies taking away are independent control of our own devices?

Moral of the story: DON'T flash over a locked bootloader EVER or you will end up with a completely brick device, with no solution other than to open it up and replace the motherboard entirely.

I'm a Linux guy, but for some goddamn reason I work in sound. Which means I need vst plugins and windows. EVERY FUCKING TIME WINDOWS OVERWRITES MY DARN LINUX PARTITION just enough that I can't recover it AND THEN FUCKS UP THE BOOTLOADER THAT I CAN'T EVEN BOOT Windows. Whyyyyyyy? I just want to work or play a game but now I'm stuck fixing bootloaders and corrupt partitions...... Fml

Why does Google FRP even exist?!

For everyone who doesn't know what FRP is: FRP (Factory Reset Protection) is a partition on an Android device that stores data about the last used Google account on the device. It "protects" the device to be used by a second person (or a thief) even AFTER a factory reset when executed via bootloader.

Last week I bought a HTC One A9 second-hand w/o any documents. I ensured it has been reset, so I took it home... I then wanted to set it up, as following message appeared on the screen: "This device has been reset. Please login using a Google account that has been synced with this device before."
I checked the IMEI for being blacklisted, but it wasn't. Unlocking the bootloader and erasing the frp partition is not an option, because on HTC devices you have to enable OEM unlocking in the settings first. Someone stated on a forum, that you can bypass the bootloader lock with a "RUU Image" (I'm not familiar with this so pls don't blame me for that statement). But since the phone has a branding from Vodafone Germany, I can't find a RUU Image that would flash the device without a CID mismatch...

Why the f*** does Google have to implement a feature that prevents to use the phone when bought from another person that you don't know?

Was installing Arch linux in dual boot with Windows and I fucked up.
Now I can't boot back into Windows. I tried to restore the boot 'thing' and I wasn't able to.
So tomorrow I will have to reinstall every single program I had since Microsoft doesn't make installed softawared recoverable.
P.S. This is the 4th time I try to install Arch without success (had problems with the bootloader, kde and gpu drivers and ended up bricking the os) but I'm still going to try until I get it to work. Why? Because I hate my life.

Decided to get myself a new phone as the 2013 model is getting morally obsolete. I can still flash Lineage/Android10 and it will run it. But the apps (e.g. Google Maps) nowadays are such a performance hog it can't cope.
So I've searched through gsmarena, prioritizing smaller phones, picked myself a candidate and had it on my desk after few days.
The 2013 mindset still the same "do the backup before touching the phone in any way". How do you do backup? Unlock bootloader, boot/flash TWRP, run backup.
I've realized only after the unlocking and some googling, that the unlock automatically deletes TA partition and stored DRM keys. So advanced licensed features of the phone are gone. Also there is no way to lock the bootloader again, so I've lost the SafetyNet validation too.

tl;dr: I've fucked up my new phone as a first step after I got it.

"Grub installation failed would you like to try again or continue without a bootloader?"

I was like well why in the burning hell would you even touch the bootloader on a completely different drive then you are installed on.

Boy, never was I so wrong...

That motherfucker deleted the windows bootloader and I've tried everything to get it back. Even tried to restore the whole frickin boatloader from scratch, with no success.

Best I could do was to make a pendrive with the bootloader on so I can boot up that shit. Four days have passed and still no luck in fixing it.

Well I guess I will call this a security feuture. If you don't insert the correct thumb drive you couldn't access the computer.

Call me an idiot... Yesterday I just installed Arch Linux. Guess what happened?
I formatted my fedora-drive and then noticed I destroyed my bootloader. Please just kill me😫 Anyone had such problems too and maybe could give me some advice how to fix?

it would help if i had time to learn even a little more C, as I'm bumbling my way through the Linux kernel and GodMode9 (an amazingly powerful 3DS manip tool for everything from the SD card to the NAND to literally raw FIRM0/FIRM1 bootloader access) to try amd patch some code from GM9 into the kernel to handle the SD card *properly* so Linux 3DS doesn't constantly hang when reading/writing to the SD card, to enable Wi-Fi access (same bus location and similar bus structure as SD/NAND access, different processor,) enable NAND decryption and access (yes, really, NAND is encrypted via software, which is... ...fun...) and more.

tl;dr: the 3DS hardware, C, and others' code collectively make me wanna slit my fucking wrists. Hopefully my sacrifice allows higher-level programming languages to be visble for low-level jobs in the future.

My teacher gave me his phone during class and told my to give him Android 7.0 (HTC m7) and now I am plowing through Verizon's bullshit to unlock the bootloader

My experience with Fedora:

1. Copy to thumb drive
2. Find out the thumb drive wasn't good enough
3.copied to another thumb drive
4.Successfully booted
5.start installation
6.Shit forgot to partition my NTFS drives
7.Back to Windows to do it
8.back to install again
9.Start installation, setup partitioning
10. Didnt notice that my EFI partition wasn't detected
11.Fedora tries to install its bootloader in God knows what place
12.bootloader install fail
13.reboot comp
14. Missing operating system
15. Spend my whole fucking night repairing the boot partition and the problem was a fuckin missing BOOT flag
16. No grub
17.spent another decade trying to fix it
18. Give up and get some sleep

Probably Fedora will have to wait for another day, tiring experience

Was working on Windows 10 laptop with SSD.
Put to sleep mode n went for lunch.
Came back, switched on, blue screen.
Restarted, can not boot.
Opened back panel, removed ssd, connected to other machine with cable, did not detect. Shit, my 1tb SSD is gone.
Took out old rusty 128gb SSD, reformatted it.
Downloaded windows 10 bootloader on USB n reinstalled windows.
From my backed up choco script, reinstalled all apps.
Back to work.

I have lost now another device to planned obscolence (how is that still legal), my g3 officially took its last breath two days ago, first it was its battery dying (thousands of devices broke that way [exactly two years after buying it] and at that time there was no batteries to replace it with) - whoever was brave enough to hold onto his device for longer than the battery failure - he then faced the simcard reader breaking and that was my case now too.

I asked many colleagues for help and even found a guy that does repairs for the oldest phones (got too excited), but even he couldnt find the issue, besides a guess that its the main chip that partially died on purpose or it got somewhere desoldered by the always and poorly managed overheating issue, which would cost almost the same to replace as just getting a new phone in the end and even then, theres probably a third switch they planned, to give you the final bullet.

I got a Xiaomi Redmi Note 4 now and really gotta say they have an amazing near vanilla android experience and their "two phone" isolated spaces are quite handy to seperate work and private notifications, apps and files.

It was even compatible with lineageOS and has a simple website to unlock the bootloader (a first for me, never saw any company making it that easy), but after trying their version of it, I don't even have to switch.

I will still miss the vibration motor of the g3, the feedback of it when typing is still to this day the best one I ever tried.

TLDR; windows sucks donkey balls

Sometime ago I started to get battery issues on my laptop using windows. Even with 100% charge it would soon display 0% when unplugged.

A few months back I switched to linux on my laptop and on my desk station. And to my surprise, battery issues dissapeared while using linux (manjaro i3). Anybody had that same problem?

Anyway I dual boot win 10 and linux just in case I'd need windows, and this week I noticed my root parition didn't have any space left.

For the next few hours I'm in a car so I thought hey great time to reinstall linux with a bigger root partition. I already had reinstalled windows, and with all the bloat removed, I could shrink my windows partition to make more space for linux.

Now all I need to do is prepare a usb stick with the manjaro iso. I could do that in linux, but since reinstalling windows killed my grub bootloader I couldn't boot up manjaro.

Right, so in windows I go and want to create this bootable EFI usb stick from the manjaro iso. Now the battery issue kicks in again, stating 0%. But with luck, the usb creation finished without my machine dying. Now I just need to restart my laptop and boot from the usb and .... Crap. my Laptop doesn't boot up anymore
-_-

Now i need to wait for a plug to be able to power it up again. Once I boot from the usb I'm sure I could use the laptop some more hours until the battery is actually dead. Fuck windows

bro look how cool i am haha lol i know java c c# angular react and php lol haha infact bro i created couple compilers haha lol bro vscode bro more like vssucks lol i use Google Docs for coding haha bro what is windows i use Ubuntu lol for that alpha sigma grindset life haha lol just update 1000 packages a week bro i play with the bootloader like messi plays football bro haha bro i can't exit vim bro i basically stay in it haha lol bro i know all about AI haha LLMs haha im taking an inteview, a shit and solving complex neurological simulations at once bro haha i wear dev related tshirts haha lol bro my house is built on Alexa bro haha ALEXA TURN ON THE LIGHTS see how cool it is bro haha i use OAuth everywhere bro to gain access to my toilet seat haha lol my thumbs hurt so bad lol bro cuz I code all day long bro what are weekends bro I never take leaves bro haha have to stay on that sigma side hustle culture right haha look how many stickers i have on my laptop haha im so cool haha lol.

But I am lonely and go online to tell people how cool I am from my mother's basement.

-Me lvl22
-Writing engineering thesis
-Have two W10's, because of requirements for HoloLens emulator
-Turn off computer
-Run it again and bootloader doesn't loading
-Heart attack guaranteed

I just fucked up real bad:

My phone was giving some error about not being able to install an update. Fair enough, i think to myself, so i try rebooting. Still nothing...

I then remember that i at some point OEM unlocked it for some testing, so i start up adb and see if i can connect during the update process. I can't. This is bad: I can't get into my home environment, nor can i connect with adb

Then i try booting into recovery, but instead of booting to ACTUAL recovery, it boots to some custom made "E-Recovery" made by huawei (my phone is a huawei p9 lite), which only gives me the option to download the update, which crashes, and no way of resetting. However, from here, i am finally able to connect to my internal storage via hisuite to make a backup

Next up: Bootloader
So i next load up the unlocked bootloader to try and manually flash the update. That works great, but it still wont boot normally. So i figure: it must think my device is in fact a different device. At this point i'm pretty fucked: Even though i have my data backed up, i can't manually download the update from huawei's site because i don't have the right keys, and i can't download an OTA because their site sucks and half of the downloads don't work, including the one i need. So now i'm stuck here with a bricked phone because EMUI doesn't know how to install an update.

I then did the stupidest thing i have done to date: i wanted to flash a custom recovery image over the "E-Recovery" in order to do some troubleshooting, but instead of writing
"fastboot (mydeviceid) flash recovery recovery.img"
I wrote
"fastboot (mydeviceid) flash boot recovery.img"
Meaning i flashed my BOOT partition with a custom recovery image that turned out to not be able to run. Great! Now i've totally fucked my boot sequence

I can't call their support line either, because as soon as they realize i've tried to restore it myself, and therefor had my OEM unlocked, they basically just hang up.

I don't know if this is a joke or a miracle.
I was pooping myself on a toilet, and beside me was a bucket of water, then there was a mosquito in my palm where I held my phone. after I snap it, I accidentally threw my phone at the bucket of water.

First and foremost. It's not a water-proof phone, so don't expect that I'm rich. I immediately grab it and it's so wet.

After a while, it gets a lot of touch bug and plugged in headset which is full of water in it.

tried to wash it after I'm done pooping. shut the phone and wait until it's all dry.

After that, my phone went to teamwip(bootloader) telling me that the custom OS is missing.

After some coding, I checked my phone and it's all normal now.

Lesson Learned: never shit when you have a phone with you.

The bug I never fixed isn't a bug in code I wrote, but rather an OS problem I've given up on fixing.

I dual-boot Windows and Linux on my desktop PC. Every time Windows updates, it switches from grub to the Windows bootloader, making it impossible to boot into Linux. I've fixed it three times (each time requiring a different fix, from disabling fast startup to reinstalling Grub from a live USB), then gave up. My desktop PC is now a Windows machine. I'm upgrading some parts soon (including replacing my boot drive with an NVMe SSD) so I decided when I do that, I'm just going to reinstall Linux on the new drive and see how long I can last without installing Windows at all.

I just wondered... Is it even possible to write unit tests for an OS kernel or a bootloader?

How would you do that?

Don't get a xiaomi phone if you want to root it.
First the phone comes filled with bloatware which can't be deleted. Then they make you wait for 4 days to approve the bootloader unlock request and then you have to wait for fucking 15 more days to unlock the bootloader of your phone.
Great 👏

After two years of being in (metaphorical) jail, I once again was given the a privilege of unlocking and rooting my phone. Damn. Frick Huawei, never coming back to that experience.

I gotta say, rooting... Feels a tad less accessible nowadays than when I last practiced it. All this boot image backup, patch, copy, reflash is crying to be automised, only reason I can think of why that changed and magisk can no longer patch itself into the phone's initrd is that it's somehow locked? Was it a security concern? Or can sideloaded twrp no longer do that?

Oh, and the war... The war never changes, only exploits do - fruck safety net... Good for Google that they now have an *almost* unfoolable solution (almost). The new hardware-based check is annoying af, but luckily, can still be forced to downgrade back to the old basic check that can be fooled... Still, am I the only one who feels Google is kinda weird? On one hand, they support unlocking of their own brand of phones, but then they continuously try to come up with frameworks to make life with a rooted or unlocked phone more annoying...

On the other hand, I do like having my data encrypted in a way that even sideloading twrp doesn't give full access to all my stuff, including password manager cache...

Any recommendations what to install? I do love the basic tools like adaway (rip ads), greenify (yay battery life!), viper4android (More music out of my music!) and quite honestly even lucky patcher for apps where the dev studio practices disgust me and don't make me want to support them...

Emacs, because "My OS is just a bootloader for Emacs!". 😁

why is this allowed

usually it installs in a bootloader env

So, uhm. I just messed up my entire bootloader. Oh boy, here we go again.

#FuckIDoNotHaveTimeForThisButOk

I just rooted my phone after waiting long time to unlock bootloader. I know some of you here are using custom rom on redmi note 4. Which custom rom are you guys using?

So, today, I wanted to try setting up a wireguard VPN server on my little raspberry pi at home. I... expected /some/ issues, but what I found dumbfounded me.

1 - I already had the wireguard package from the unstable branch of the main raspbian repo installed... Huh, okay.
2 - Setting up config was extremely easy... Wow, so the rumors were true. Wireguard really is almost dumb-simple.
3 - Failed to create a network interface? Oh, trouble, here it is! So lets see... modprobe wireguard... Nope. Don't have the module? What?
4 - Reconfigure package to rebuild the module - missing kernel headers? Huh... weird

This was the simple stuff... Then I went down the rabbit hole of the Raspberry Pi ecosystem:

1 - There is the Raspberry Pi Bootloader, that is apparently separate from the Kernel itself. And I didn't seem to have any of the standard linux-image-* installed... What? Weird, yet there I was, running a 4.19.42-v7+ kernel...
2 - No kernel and no headers... What... The... Fuck
3 - Okay, so... Lets just... try to install the latest kernel image then? One apt-get install... It downloaded the image, but during package configuration, it failed because... I didn't have... its headers? What? What for? And if it needs them (for whatever reason), why isn't the headers package as a dependency? Ugh, whatever...
4 - Another apt-get install and... Okay, building the initrd image aaaaand...
FAIL
WHAT. What is it this time!?

Oh... Ran... No more space on device? What? Is /boot independent? Of course it is, it has to be, its a bloody different filesystem

Okay, so, lets che-OH MY GOD WTF.

Its just bloody 45 MBs big! The entire /boot is just 45 MBs large. WHY. THE. FUCK.

This was a default raspbian install from I have no idea when. But... Why. Oh WHY would ANYONE pre-configure /boot to be this incredibly tiny!?

No wonder the new init ramdisk couldn't fit in there! Its already used up from 64%!

Thanks, Raspbian Devs, now I gotta reinstall the whole system because, yes, the /boot is, of course, sector 8192. Just far enough from 2048 that there are *some* sectors free - About 3 MBs.

So what did I try? Remove the partition and recreate it from the very beginning. Only... I never tried in in the past, and okay, kernel doesn't like having the partition where its image resides deleted on the fly, it will not give up FDs pointing there or something.

So now, I have a system I cannot reboot, or it will never boot back up :|

Thanks, Raspbian!

I need to get a cheap 1U somewhere or something T.T

I am currently fixing the EFI partition from my laptop's SSD on my gf's computer on a livebooted image of some random Linux. Anyone know if its possible that no bootloader can boot if there isnt any room on the EFI part? Oh yeah, and only a single mouse out of 3 works for some reason, and no keyboard... so I am using the onscreen keyboard -_-'

Does anyone have dual boot Linux/ Windows and also have problems with the slow-ass periodic updates Windows shoves down your throat, needs to do multiple restarts for, but gets stuck at the grub bootloader?

It's really annoying the next time you need your PC quickly you're forced to standby for 2 hours.

Can I say Ubuntu installation has really gone messy lately(at least the last time when I installed back in 2009). Especially the part of disk partition and selection. You get only three options - Install alongside Windows(without additional customisation), Install on the whole disk, and then Custom.

Most times these days people will select Custom and configure the partitions. And then the crucial part is selection of Boot Loader. But it's not given much focus which is empirical because otherwise even if your installation is successful, without the correct Bootloader config, you will continue to boot into Windows and then debugging and fixing gets really tricky. Especially for somebody who wants to try it out.

And then you will be cursing yourself to have bought a laptop with Nvidia graphics card because the drivers are proprietary and sometimes they have you stuck in Blank Screens prior to login. Ubuntu is not at fault here, but then it makes the life of people trying out things so much more difficult that will force people to just give it up.

I had moved to CentOS(because of Gnome) back in 2015 after really squeezing everything out of Ubuntu 9.04 on my Intel Core 2 Quad. And today, I installed Ubuntu 20.04 after almost 11+ years and it was really not a good experience.

So, I tried to set uo hibernate on my hdd.
It takes longer to start than to reboot, but atleast I learned a bit more about my bootloader / systemd ...

Currently trying to make a multi boot machine, with a lot of linux distros inside, like debian, fedora, gentoo and arch.

I know I will have to format everything a lot of time, because of stupid mistakes, I want to try to put /home in common, and play with some more SSD, and to put a preempt_rt patched kernel somewhere.

I am starting from debian,
Format counter: 3

Reason 0: because i need to install at least once...
Reason 1: I am stupid
Reason 2: I disconnected the SSD,to connect a disk with windows. Now bootloader doesn't find any os in the SSD anymore... still no clue, and in case of doubt: give windows the fault 😠😠😠

DAMN YOU WINDOWS, how did you find that I want to use debian? What did you do to break it?? (Despite it wasn't even connected?!?)

I have checked everything about secure boot, and I am sure it is disabled...

And every search online gives results about dual boot, but it is not my case... :/

you know you made a shitty product when you need remote desktop to do some usefull work. #surface-rt #microsoft.

I got one for free from my previous employment that is nice. oke i got it but i never use it. it is really the worst product every. now no support what so every. @microsoft: hey let us lock them down so it is secure.... fuck that shit just open the bootloader and let mr use that thing propper.

Somewhat new to Linux and tried to install it on my usb so I don't affect my computer. Installed and an error saying could not install bootloader and booting from that usb just shows a blinking cursor and trying to boot back to Windows shows grub rescue as it doesn't recognise something. Might have to experiment with changing from legacy BIOS to UEFI. But I just hope nothing has happened to my windows

I spend fucking 6 hours of the birthday party of my girlfriends father fixing his M.2 SSD involving:
* driving through half of the city because the store nearby had closed half an hour ago... (and spending 30% more)
* cloning the drive back and forth (including several session of browsing to find the solutions to several errors)
* trying to repair bootloader (without success)
... Just to reinstall the old one because it wouldn't boot from the new one.

And tomorrow I'm going to a business trip and I all I wanted was to prepare some side projects for the 4 hour long ride.

Fuck you M.2 and mother fucking windows 7 for being such shitheads.

Installed Kali Linux alongside Arch Linux. Earlier I was using systemd boot manager. Now that I've installed Kali, grub was installed along with it. Now when I boot arch via grub it's not loading.

Some of the daemons are loading and then it stops there itself.

Please help...

!rant
Guys need help. I have dual booted Antergos with existing Windows 10. After installating Antergos it did not boot, Windows 10 was booting directly.

So I fired a command in Windows 10 cmd
bcdedit set {bootmgr} /boot/efi
And then I was able to boot into Antergos via Grub bootloader.

Now the problem is that I can not see Windows 10 option in Grub bootloader.

I tried to Google the solution and I came to the conclusion that if I install the Grub again system should automatically detect the Windows installation.

But I'm not sure where to start. Has anyone faced this problem beofre?

Please help :)

Does anyone here know how to set up windows 10 bootloader files?

So I wiped my laptop clean, installed windows, installed manjaro, and deleted window's ESP for shits and giggles. Then I tried using bcdboot to restore bootloader files in the ESP I put GRUB in, which got windows 10 on the GRUB but selecting it loops me back to it. Whatdoido.

My PC kept booting into linux cause i installed two OS's on my HDD. Long story short, had to remove the Linux (it was Kali) and i didnt know how. And so started the longest few hours of my life.

I deleted the linux partition feeling like some genius that could speak to computers. To my suprise the computer didnt speak back, i restarted it and the GRUB bootloader had this sheepish grin on its face like as if it was saying, "Not sure who's been speaking to you all this time, but i bet you can hear me now, hehehe". I went down the rabbit hole that we all know and love called the google search bar.

My computer could no longer boot into windows, and i started to question my very existence on this earth. Hours of using our modern day saviour, google of alphabet inc, i came to an eventual conclusion. Grabbed a 4GB flash, made it into a bootable device and said good riddance to bad rubbish.

welp boot loop in stock recovery and i can get to bootloader

Quick question: If you install only Linux (say Ubuntu), and boot your system, do you still see bootloader screen with options to choose where to boot from (Ubuntu/Advanced Ubuntu) like we get when we have dual boot, or does it boot directly?

Help!
I am trying to update android on my Nexus 10 to 5.5. it is stock other than twrp for recovery and an unlocked bootloader.
Below is the error I get when trying to install the update.
Any ideas?
Ps. Sorry it's literally a screen picture

Installed ros and everything on NVidia board. Dd on to SD card and I have a bootable device.

Fiddle with boot config - fuck yeah.

I then just flash the new board.

Everything crashes FUCK. off and on again... Come on! phew

Ahhh but the flash should work, hmm choose another partition.

Everything is done YES I AM A HACKER. Unplug sd card, off and on again.

No response killed the bootloader, fuck me...

Is it possible to install a Linux distro on a android phone?
I have already unlocked bootloader so it should work right? Android is linux too.

I'm sorry if this is more of a xda-developers or stackoverflow question. Tell me if i should move the question somewhere else.

Update on the ACPI booting error - i attempted to install antergos onto the SWAP partition (to try to rescue my files and then reinstall antergos) which was 8gb, which is too small to install antergos, a DE, and the bootloader. i wiped everything. Impatience is a bitch. why am i like this.

i also decided on using xfce rather than kde - i feel like it runs faster. I can get the kde WM right? i miss my wobbly windows

Factory Reset my Nexus 6P, can't get Google Assistant -

So I was using the Android O Dev preview and decided the annoying things in it was just too much so I un-enrolled which reset my device, I'm now on Android N and have been for a week or two, everything's up to date and all but holding the home menu gives me the "Now on tap", I've cleared the Google app and services data/cache, swapped the language to English (US) and rebooted a few times but still nothing.

I'm not rooted and my bootloader is locked, I'm in Australia and had access to Google Assistant without any trickery before...

Not too sure what I'm missing and how to enable Assistant? So freaking annoying not having it and stuff, it was so useful and I miss it

Please slap me in the face... A week ago I remove my Linux partition on my main rig because I don't have a use for Linux on that system. But I forgot to deal with the bootloader.... Then a week after when I rebooted for whatever reason, I got a grub rescue (obviously). And I realized I had no hard drive with a rescue tool to boot on (I don't use optic drives). Took me 2 hours to find my sata2usb cable to recover an iso and put it on my utility hard drive... Then, when trying to set a proper bootloader, it listed all my disks, except the main SSD I wanted. Turns out, another hour later, I found that the power supply for that drive was a bit unplugged because I had to remove one of the drive to access it. All is running well now, but I wasted way too much time on that 😤

What's generally considered the best (in terms of cost and compatibility) phone to flash a custom rom to? My current one is filled with bloatware that I can't uninstall and the bootloader is locked.

Wanted to resize the /system of my Nexus for the Stock gapps with parted.
Deleted bootloader noooooooooo!

Someone an idea to fix this :/

Just updated my OP2 to the 3.0.2 through the bootloader, because it wasn't capable of installing it through the OS... I guess that was because I was running the Beta.
When it was done I got the lovely option of "Reboot" or "Yes". I pressed Yes, which sent me to the menu.... ? Well then the reboot option in this menu might work? Got "Reboot" or "No"... I guess someone forgot the meaning of yes and no :P (forgot to take a picture :()

The fact that Windows 10 needs its own bootloader as the primary to update and fuck up GRUB is beyond me, so much for “supporting Linux”. Fuck you Microshit.