Does it actually get deleted? I have seen too many cases of ‘Somehow deleted data has returned’ to believe that request does anything.

I apologize if my comment came off as an attack, that was not my intention.

I appreciate you putting in the effort to bring up a concern, but I still don’t get it.

Hope you enjoy your weekend

I not sure what you are trying to argue.

Even if you audit the code yourself, you still need to trust your OS, you need to trust the hardware the OS is running on, and you need to trust the proprietary drivers of each component in that hardware. Then at that point you gotta trust the person who sold you the hardware hasn’t modified it.

Ok and?

Haha right! That’s a good idea, don’t use dd actually

First take a deep breath, there are infinitely more ways to fuck up a system beyond repair and you are not even in the yellow zone.

1. Plug in the old usb stick
2. Go into BIOS and change boot order to usb
3. boot into live mode, there is usually an option to ‘try the os’ instead of installing it, do that
4. There download a new image, maybe mint or correct version of pop!
5. put in a new usb stick
6. use ‘dd’ to write the image to the new usb stick
7. reboot into the new usb stick and install the image