To achieve such a disk I simply made the directory "/dataStronghold" at the root directory however I have no privilege to write there. Also I copied backup files from my previous install (windows 10) to there using "sudo cp...". My questions are:
Can I safely give myself writing privileges in that "dataStronghold" without changing privileges anywhere else?
Was I supposed to set the location of "dataStronghold" disk to a path inside of the home directory? If so how can I make it safely right now? Also what if I don't?
Do you have any other suggestions about this topic?
Unrelated but once I tried to install jre by a tar.gz file using terminal, it seems like it only unwraps the file, while this progress does it change any other file in my computer? If so can installations on zorin can be made in any part of computer? How will I access applications after tar.gz installations?
For now we should stick to your first and most pressing issue: the folder with all the files you can't get to (from my understanding). So before going any further, while your computer may have had a D drive, I'm wondering if your system had 2 drives, or if it partitioned it into a way to have another drive on it.
If you could send me a screenshot of Disks, just so I can get a rough idea of how your system is laid out that would definitely help. What you've done currently is just make a folder within the root of the filesystem, which wouldn't really be the same as creating another drive and having a separate label for that drive.
As for getting your data back from this "dataStronghold" folder, you should be able to give yourself permissions to just THAT folder (and everything inside it) without affecting the rest of the system. However, before providing assistance on that, if you could open a Folders windows and when you navigate to the folder, if you could right click it and open properties, and paste that into here so we could see that as well, that would be great (so we get paths right and everything else).
Ok so I see a little better now. So you have Zorin installed on partition 1? And the partition 5 is used strictly for this Stronghold folder? I just want to make sure that I'm getting that right. I was under the impression initially that the stronghold folder was on the same partition as the Zorin install.
I'll defer to applecheeks on the permissions issue as they're more familiar with Linux than I am. I could probably work out what it would be as a chmod command, but I wouldn't want to give you the wrong parameters and have you grant extra permissions.
For your other questions:
It would be more standard for you to mount datastronghold in /home, but it's by no means required. If you wanted to change it now, you could do so by making /home/datastronghold and changing the mount point. You wouldn't need to re-copy anything, since you're changing the mount point, not the location of the data.
As for the .tar.gz files, these are only archives, much like ZIP files. Extracting it won't change anything on your system unless you run a program or script in the .tar.gz. Depending on the program, that might install the application, or it might just run it directly in place. Usually when installing an application, you'll get a flatpak, a snap, or a native application (.deb on Zorin). Flatpaks and snaps can be added via Zorin's built-in software store, as can some native installers (those will say APT in the software store). It's also possible to get applications via other means, but I don't want to throw every single possibility at you at once.
On the topic of "I want the same here", I will say that one very common source of frustration that I've seen many times is with managing expectations. Linux and Windows are different operating systems and things will, naturally, be different. You should expect and allow some time to overcome these differences, while learning how to make best use of the machine that you're using.
Yes, you can do this. The question is why do you want to do this? By using your own home folder:
Already have permissions.
Other users already have their permissions restricted.
It's far more convenient to use.
Even on Windows, you wouldn't use the root of the filesystem for that. If you can describe what your use case is, we can give you some ideas on how to approach it.
Yes, you can technically install stuff anywhere you want. But most programs installed this way should come with an installation script or at least some instructions that you should read carefully. Most likely, they'll end up creating the necessary files to execute the software just like any other installation.
As a general rule of thumb, don't change the installation location unless you know what you're doing. But if you have to, or want to, I would recommend using either:
For the executable:
/usr/bin/ to make it available to all users.
or
/home/zenzen/.local/share/bin to make it available only to user "zenzen".
For the shortcut, so that you can find it on the start menu:
/usr/share/applications/<package-name>.desktop to make it available to all users.
or
/home/zenzen/.local/share/applications/<package-name>.desktop to make it available only to user "zenzen".
You saw. True. True, I configured while installing zorin. Okey. No it wasn't. Even tho I am new to linux I am not new to software development and computers in general. I converted to linux because I am preparing for "AI and Data Engineering" Collage and I windows install needed needed a factory reset since because of windows OS even after I connected to ethernet applications weren't able to use them.
The reason I want the dataStronghold to be at root is so the installations I made there wont suffer from path length limit.
The reason I wanted to know can I make installations (especially tar.gz) anywhere is so I can install them to dataStronghold.
I'm not so sure a path length limit should be worried about when installing applications? I'll be honest, I haven't run into this issue in a LONG time, I usually just mount my stuff into my /home or /usr and everything is fine there (my external drives I usually use /mnt). But I think at this point you need to make a decision:
Do you really want permissions there? Or
Would you rather change the mount point, which would mostly alleviate all of these issues you appear to be having? (This is my choice)
Personally I wouldn't want to change the permissions, not that it's really a big issue or anything, it's just that I prefer to not have to change anything like that if I don't have to. But if you want to change the permissions, basically I would also run on the assumption that everything within that folder would need to be changed as well, otherwise you'll just get into the folder and everything else would still be, most likely, inaccessible. This is also doable, it's literally an option in the command, but it CAN cause issues rarely. And this causes me EXTRA CAUTION since you're bringing over some files from Windows.
Are you telling me even if I give myself privileges in the dataStronghold directory the sub directories I create after that change would still be read only? You mean It is possible I can be bringing viruses? Or are there other issues that can be caused by that permissions? And it is true I met path length too long error messages while installing 3 Software Development Softwares in windows so I don't want it risk it much.
No I don't necessarily mean in the way of viruses. What I mean is, you would also need to recursively change permissions in that location all the way in, so that you didn't have a single permission issue on any file/folder. Given that some of these are Windows files, I strongly hesitate doing that, since it may cause issues through windows that may halt access or standard use cases.
Linux as an OS doesn't have a path length limit. The different filesystems theoretically could, but the default filesystem for Zorin (ext4) doesn't have one, and neither does btrfs, another common choice for Linux filesystems. So you probably don't have to worry about path length here, though as Zenzen noted, filenames are limited to 255 bytes (not characters).
Alright guys, you pretty much answered my original question and I am about to make this question "answered" . But before than that I wonder if can simply tar.gz files for my installations and user the tar command "tar" with necessary suffixes in terminal to install them in a installation folder inside dataStronghold.
That's going to depend on the program you're installing. Not all are available as tarballs, and not all tarballs are ready to use programs: often source code is distributed in tarballs and you'd need to compile it from scratch. Some programs will have dependencies that aren't included in a tarball or even a .deb. What you're describing will work fine for programs that are available ready to run from an extracted tar.gz (Discord, for example, would work fine), but others not so much.
There's another program format called AppImage that would also work the way you're describing. Instead of a tarball, you download a .AppImage file, and that one file is the entire program, ready to go. But Flatpaks, Snaps, .debs/RPMs/other package manager based programs--they're just not going to work like this.
Someone more experienced than I am would have to explain how to control where they're installed. I believe most make shortcuts and install in hidden directories under /home, but I could be mistaken, especially for .debs. And then there are self-installing shell scripts, like Calibre uses, self-extracting .bin files like Genymotion uses... program installation and distribution is much more diverse in Linux than Windows.
I tried to mount the dataStronghold to "/home/linebreaker30113/dataStronghold/". I simply and only went to section "edit mount options" and then simply changed the "Mount Point". But it didn't mount. Should I just restart the computer?
I would make absolutely sure it's unmounted and then yeah, a reboot wouldn't hurt. I'll be leaving work soon so i'll be afk for a bit, but if the /home still doesn't want to work, we could try /media/mnt/strongHold or /mnt/stronghold (I need to remember the correct pathing, but that general area).
thanks to: applecheeks37, Locklear93, zenzen
to achieve closest think to the "D disk" in windows:
While installing zorin there is a section where you configure disks and partitions, in that section mount the partitions with a custom name which is not the same as the name of linux's directories' to a path inside of "/mnt" for global access or inside of system to configure after completing the install in the "Disks" application to mount it inside of your home directory of a single user so only that user will have perms for writing. Also in linux there is no path length limit unlike linux so path where you mount the partition can be anything.
. But before than that I wonder if can simply tar.gz files for my installations and user the tar command "tar" with necessary suffixes in terminal to install them in a installation folder inside dataStronghold.