Linux has its stupid bullshit too, its just 12 of one and a dozen of another sort of situation.
For example I don’t have to jump through hoops to auto mount a secondary drive on windows I just install the drive and there it is. But on linux I have to jump through all sorts of ridiculous hoops for some stupid reason. However it will auto mount flash drives and sd cards even though those are the ones more likely to pose a security risk.
What are you running? Mine just shows up, I double click it and supply the encryption password and it’s mounted.
(Which could be skipped if it wasn’t encrypted)
So many people do not understand the “auto” part of auto mount, clicking on it first is not auto mount. Auto mount means its mounted on boot not after you click on it.
You can set it to do that. Same as you do in windows when you assign a drive letter, it then will automount that drive. You can do that in Linux in the disks tool
Depending on your desktop environment you can, on linux as a whole no you can’t. Helpfully gnome disks has a nifty button (thats buried under a bunch of context menus) but KDE does not unless it was just added in the last year. (i had to go though a whole bunch of stupid fstab bullshit to get my drive to auto mount when I setup my bazzite install)
I hate fstab it seems needlessly complicated but I like the gui you got there. Much easier to click a button and move on with life. I’ll have to give that a go.
Where do you get once every 2 years? Do you never reboot your machine?
It’s once every boot. Everytime the machine starts you have to go to file manager and click on it before it mounts unless you modify fstab.
At this point you must be missing the point on purpose.
Just go ahead and google mount drive on boot in linux and you can see the 1,000s of post from people having the exact issue I describe. I’ll even do it for you.
Then go ahead and google the same thing for windows and you’ll see what a non issue it is in windows because even google will assume that surely you meant linux.
Where do you get once every 2 years? Do you never reboot your machine?
I’m hearing you like to reboot your machine unusually often.
The reason I can think of where clicking would be a huge pain in the ass is an automatic task. I have some of those, but I put them on machines that I treat as servers, and the time between reboots is genuinely counted in years, for those machines.
At this point you must be missing the point on purpose.
I wasn’t before, but now I am.
I find your argument distasteful. If you want a server, use a server. But there’s no need to shout to the world that servers require command line use. That’s normal in 2025.
If you treat your laptop like a server, that’s okay. No one is judging. But my grandma isn’t doing that, and it rings hollow to complain so loudly about it in a thread about average users enjoying Linux Mint.
An average user will never even notice the issue you have been complaining about, while enjoying the product for free.
I don’t normally tell people to go open a pull request, but you should do so, if only to get a better understanding of what the community has already given you for free.
I just plugged in an old drive to make sure I’m not going crazy, and I didn’t do anything besides hit the power button, log in, and open the file explorer:
As always on Linux you have different possibilities. Most big Desktop Environment’s like KDE / GNOME / Cinnamon … can mount devices automatically or on a click on the device. No need for additional entries in fstab.
If you however want a more general approach you can use systemd’s automount or a fixed mountpount using fstab.
Most normal Desktop User’s will be totally fine with the DE Solutions.
I use my secondary and tertiary drives for steam and I boot my machine to big picture mode on startup so I need them to auto mount. Having to navigate to the file manager and clicking on them is not the same.
So on windows a drive will not automount the first time, you have to assign a drive letter, which it then remembers. If you skip this its just a drive in the device manager with no mount.
You can accomplish the same in Linux so the drive automounts on boot with a nofail option so that if it is disconnected from the PC the boot moves on rather than waiting on the drive to become available. But otherwise thr DE will let you mount it instantly.
This is a non problem. Linux has issues but drive mounting is not one of them.
I thought you were talking about just opening the drive to use it from the file browser.
I do actually have a drive I use for automated backups, but I just used the GUI to change the automount setting:
I guess that’s a little bit inconvenient, but its like 3 clicks, adding a step to something I had to do to set up some other software. Its not any more complicated than disabling sticky keys in Windows.
Except we’re not comparing it to disabling sticky keys, we’re comparing it to needing needing to follow an entire page’s worth of instructions, pressing secret key combinations and entering commands into the terminal, just so you can use your computer without it phoning home to the mothership. And that’s on top of the fact that the instructions are probably going to be different in a year since microsoft is deliberately fucking with you.
This article is more for a headless server. Any DE is going to present disks to you. And if some odd quirky drive doesn’t, you go into the disks app and click the play icon on the drive you want to mount
Same with windows, first time you plug in it asks for drive letter, (which is mounting) if you hit ignore, that disk won’t be mounted at reboot, but if you choose a letter it will
Never happens unless the drive is unformatted or a format windows can’t read. And if it is unformatted you get a pop up telling you so and an offer to format it which after that point it mounts on boot everytime without any interaction needed at all from the user. If it is already formatted it just automatically assigns the next available drive letter and mounts it. Linux just does nothing until you dig around in context menus and even after you format it it still won’t auto mount until you dig around through more menus or go through the ridiculous ftsab bullshit.
Not true, if you format a NTFS or fat in windows, then remove drive letter, it won’t auto Mount, same I’d you format it in Linux to a windows format and add to your PC, it prompts for a drive letter.
As for Linux, your user session defaults determine if it automounts or not.
Mine USD set to automount, so you can see in this screen the 80gig drive was auto mounted, but you can turn off USD and use specific mount options.
I think people are confused because the difference between mount on access and mount on boot is meaningless for 98% of people. I can think of reasons to need the latter, but not many.
You are probably right, most folks aren’t even aware because they have no need for it. The only reason I need it is for my gaming rig that launches big picture mode on startup. I have no need for it on any of my desktop machines.
Yeah, but again you don’t have to do all this stuff just to use the PC. And for having the tiny user base Linux does it’s amazingly pro-user compared to the monopolistic bullshittery that is Microsoft Windows.
Linux has its stupid bullshit too, its just 12 of one and a dozen of another sort of situation. For example I don’t have to jump through hoops to auto mount a secondary drive on windows I just install the drive and there it is. But on linux I have to jump through all sorts of ridiculous hoops for some stupid reason. However it will auto mount flash drives and sd cards even though those are the ones more likely to pose a security risk.
What are you running? Mine just shows up, I double click it and supply the encryption password and it’s mounted. (Which could be skipped if it wasn’t encrypted)
So many people do not understand the “auto” part of auto mount, clicking on it first is not auto mount. Auto mount means its mounted on boot not after you click on it.
You can set it to do that. Same as you do in windows when you assign a drive letter, it then will automount that drive. You can do that in Linux in the disks tool
Depending on your desktop environment you can, on linux as a whole no you can’t. Helpfully gnome disks has a nifty button (thats buried under a bunch of context menus) but KDE does not unless it was just added in the last year. (i had to go though a whole bunch of stupid fstab bullshit to get my drive to auto mount when I setup my bazzite install)
GNOME has user session defaults that can automount, but also YAST partitioner can play with fstab if you want.
I hate fstab it seems needlessly complicated but I like the gui you got there. Much easier to click a button and move on with life. I’ll have to give that a go.
So you’re complaining that you have to click on it - once every two years - when you reboot…
That’s rough, buddy.
I joke. But also, I guess if you feel that strongly about wasting my a click, Linux is definitely the OS for you.
Where do you get once every 2 years? Do you never reboot your machine? It’s once every boot. Everytime the machine starts you have to go to file manager and click on it before it mounts unless you modify fstab.
At this point you must be missing the point on purpose.
Just go ahead and google mount drive on boot in linux and you can see the 1,000s of post from people having the exact issue I describe. I’ll even do it for you.
https://www.google.com/search?q=mount+drive+on+boot+in+linux
Then go ahead and google the same thing for windows and you’ll see what a non issue it is in windows because even google will assume that surely you meant linux.
https://www.google.com/search?q=mount+drive+on+boot+in+windows
I’m hearing you like to reboot your machine unusually often.
The reason I can think of where clicking would be a huge pain in the ass is an automatic task. I have some of those, but I put them on machines that I treat as servers, and the time between reboots is genuinely counted in years, for those machines.
I wasn’t before, but now I am.
I find your argument distasteful. If you want a server, use a server. But there’s no need to shout to the world that servers require command line use. That’s normal in 2025.
If you treat your laptop like a server, that’s okay. No one is judging. But my grandma isn’t doing that, and it rings hollow to complain so loudly about it in a thread about average users enjoying Linux Mint.
An average user will never even notice the issue you have been complaining about, while enjoying the product for free.
I don’t normally tell people to go open a pull request, but you should do so, if only to get a better understanding of what the community has already given you for free.
I just plugged in an old drive to make sure I’m not going crazy, and I didn’t do anything besides hit the power button, log in, and open the file explorer:
And its right there.
That behavior is controlled in the gnome user session defaults
It depends on the DE.
Even still, typing mount /dev/sda1 external isn’t exactly Cirque du Soleil
articles like this wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t true, they will appear but they wont auto mount https://techhut.tv/auto-mount-drives-in-linux-fstab/
*some distros may auto mount but I never used one that did
@the_riviera_kid @drosophila
As always on Linux you have different possibilities. Most big Desktop Environment’s like KDE / GNOME / Cinnamon … can mount devices automatically or on a click on the device. No need for additional entries in fstab.
If you however want a more general approach you can use systemd’s automount or a fixed mountpount using fstab.
Most normal Desktop User’s will be totally fine with the DE Solutions.
I use my secondary and tertiary drives for steam and I boot my machine to big picture mode on startup so I need them to auto mount. Having to navigate to the file manager and clicking on them is not the same.
I just click on it and it mounts and opens
This is Linux Mint btw
Sure, but you had to click on it first. It didn’t mount on boot.
So on windows a drive will not automount the first time, you have to assign a drive letter, which it then remembers. If you skip this its just a drive in the device manager with no mount.
You can accomplish the same in Linux so the drive automounts on boot with a nofail option so that if it is disconnected from the PC the boot moves on rather than waiting on the drive to become available. But otherwise thr DE will let you mount it instantly.
This is a non problem. Linux has issues but drive mounting is not one of them.
I thought you were talking about just opening the drive to use it from the file browser.
I do actually have a drive I use for automated backups, but I just used the GUI to change the automount setting:
I guess that’s a little bit inconvenient, but its like 3 clicks, adding a step to something I had to do to set up some other software. Its not any more complicated than disabling sticky keys in Windows.
Except we’re not comparing it to disabling sticky keys, we’re comparing it to needing needing to follow an entire page’s worth of instructions, pressing secret key combinations and entering commands into the terminal, just so you can use your computer without it phoning home to the mothership. And that’s on top of the fact that the instructions are probably going to be different in a year since microsoft is deliberately fucking with you.
Say what? That’s not true in the slightest, if the drive is mountable it will show up in your file manager.
articles like this wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t true, they will appear but they wont auto mount https://techhut.tv/auto-mount-drives-in-linux-fstab/
*some distros may auto mount but I never used one that did
This article is more for a headless server. Any DE is going to present disks to you. And if some odd quirky drive doesn’t, you go into the disks app and click the play icon on the drive you want to mount
I’ll say it again “auto mount” if you have to click on it first it’s not “auto” thats “access” mount.
Same with windows, first time you plug in it asks for drive letter, (which is mounting) if you hit ignore, that disk won’t be mounted at reboot, but if you choose a letter it will
Never happens unless the drive is unformatted or a format windows can’t read. And if it is unformatted you get a pop up telling you so and an offer to format it which after that point it mounts on boot everytime without any interaction needed at all from the user. If it is already formatted it just automatically assigns the next available drive letter and mounts it. Linux just does nothing until you dig around in context menus and even after you format it it still won’t auto mount until you dig around through more menus or go through the ridiculous ftsab bullshit.
Not true, if you format a NTFS or fat in windows, then remove drive letter, it won’t auto Mount, same I’d you format it in Linux to a windows format and add to your PC, it prompts for a drive letter.
As for Linux, your user session defaults determine if it automounts or not. Mine USD set to automount, so you can see in this screen the 80gig drive was auto mounted, but you can turn off USD and use specific mount options.
What desktop environment/distro are you using? It would be nice to be able to skip the fstab run around and just click a button.
I think people are confused because the difference between mount on access and mount on boot is meaningless for 98% of people. I can think of reasons to need the latter, but not many.
You are probably right, most folks aren’t even aware because they have no need for it. The only reason I need it is for my gaming rig that launches big picture mode on startup. I have no need for it on any of my desktop machines.
Yeah, but again you don’t have to do all this stuff just to use the PC. And for having the tiny user base Linux does it’s amazingly pro-user compared to the monopolistic bullshittery that is Microsoft Windows.