i am currently stuck having to reinstall my entire windows 11 operating system because somehow my boot drive got so messed up that it’s stuck in a BSOD loop… and the only thing i did the day before was install an NVidia driver update. somehow all my system restores magically now didn’t exist either
so i think this might be my push to look into linux, if i can get my laptop working at any point
anyone have any tips for a baby to linux and not very comfortable working in command prompts without guidance? i’d like to think of myself as techy but going into the metaphorical guts of a computer is always scary to me—i know there’s probably a lot of tutorials out there but i know the 32-bit cafe community has also dabbled into linux so i thought i’d ask as well here before i dive in
I would start by booting Linux off of a USB stick instead of jumping into an install right away. You can tinker with minimal risk and verify that all your hardware is supported. Most of the major distributions, like Debian and Mint and Fedora, let you do this.
Stay away from Ubuntu; they used to be a user-friendly Linux but that might no longer be the case.
yeah thankfully i have a USB or two I can use for testing it on, dang that sucks to hear about Ubuntu though, i’ll keep the others in mind (heard good things about Mint)
The first thing a lot of people get stuck on with migrating to linux is “Which Distro do I choose”, the answer is: It doesn’t really matter that much and you can move if you are unhappy. (The reason behind all the confusion I blame on the fact that linux attracts nerds, and nerds LOVE debating about what is best)
Mint with the XFCE desktop environment was my first taste of Linux, but I eventually settled on Fedora with GNOME.
Other than that, everything is pretty google-able with it these days, and modern user friendly distros (like mint and Fedora) render the command line optional for most day to day stuff.
When it comes to app compatibility… things are still lacking so I would suggest double checking if you have all the things you need. I personally run linux daily, but have occasionally had to jump to windows to run SolidWorks or Zeemax*. For my usecase this is rare, but if you rely on Adobe products you might be in trouble. From what I’ve heard gaming is totally fine on linux these days except for a handul of anti-cheat things, (ProtonDB is the place to look for how things run on linux).
If your website is anything to go by, I will hazard a guess and say you like customizing your environment and making it pretty, which linux is great at. Take a look at reddit’s Linux Ricing community at /r/unixporn for some inspo there.
Anyway have fun! Feel free to reply if you have any other beginner questions
*You can run most(?) windows apps in a VM if you need to, but then you have massive overheads and I run out of memory quick trying to run Solidworks in a VM so I wouldn’t reccomend it for anything that is memory hungry.
I second the suggestions for trying out Linux on a USB first, and checking if the apps you rely on have Linux alternatives, or if there is a way to run them on Linux. Aside from virtual machines, the Wine compatibility layer is the go-to method for running Windows apps on Linux. You can search for a Windows app’s compatibility with Wine by searching the Wine Application Database. If an app you rely on has a Linux alternative and it is also available on Windows, you can try to use the alternative apps on Windows first.
For gaming, gaming on Linux has improved a lot in recent years. Steam provides its own fork of Wine, named Proton, for running video games that do not support Linux natively. As pointed out above, ProtonDB is the place to look for to check out a video game’s compatibility with Proton. As for anti-cheat, you can check out Are We Anti-Cheat Yet? and GamingOnLinux’s Anti-Cheat Compatibility List.
As for distros, I also recommend Linux Mint for Linux beginners, especially for those migrated from Windows since its flagship desktop environment, Cinnamon, has a similar user interface to Windows. Linux Mint was my first Linux distro, and my father, who is tech-savvy especially for someone his age but was unfamiliar with Linux desktop, also started with Linux Mint and is still using it.
I just installed Mint on my old Windows 10 laptop and aside from having to check the authenticity of the iso, it was an absolute breeze. Even more so than reinstalling Windows, in my opinion.
It’s way more user-friendly than I was expecting, and the only command prompt stuff I had to do was to hook my Proton Drive up because there’s no Linux version of the app.
And as has already been said, you can test drive it before actually installing it, which is fantastic!
awesome :D i definitely gotta find a bigger USB to muck around with, im curious to try out mint on a USB; since i have a steamdeck as well ive worked with proton a bit too (a wee little bit)
Start with a big distro that a lot of people use, that’s my advice. Ubuntu is a good option - I know it has plenty detractors, and not without reason, but for first timers it’s a solid choice if only because there’s so much support for it out there. Just type any problem followed by ‘ubuntu’ into a search engine and you’ll find a million solutions.
The nice thing about Ubuntu is that it goes out of its way to not force the user to use the commandline. That means you can jump into it and avoid using the commandline for a while and get familiar with it at your own pace - which may happen faster than you think. I went from really hating to have to do anything in a terminal emulator in 2014 to hating having to do anything in a GUI within about two years.
I started with Ubuntu, hopped around for a little while, but ended up settling on Ubuntu MATE - runs fantastic on older machines, like the 11-year-old laptop that I use as my daily driver*. It runs smooth as butter.
The other options given in this thread are all solid, by the way - especially Mint is an incredibly polished experience these days.
* beside a desktop PC that I found by the side of the road last year
Bumping this thread because I’m looking for some Linux advice as a beginner.
Over the past week or so I’ve been troubleshooting issues with trying to install Linux on a new device (testing out multiple different distributions), and it’s looking like the issue might just be the hardware itself not playing nice.*
*Believe me, I’ve consulted with four different computer nerds for hours over the course of multiple days about this. I don’t want to run through the full list of everything we’ve already tried on this machine.
So at this point, I’m looking for pointers on selecting hardware that’s tested and proven to work well with Linux. The complication is that I’d like something with decent graphical capabilities for stuff like modest video games, hobbyist vector editing, etc., while staying within my budget. I don’t need anything top of the line, I’m not a twitch streamer, I just want to find a pre-built desktop with a tolerable graphics card that can run Phasmophobia without overheating and that won’t pitch a fit at me for trying to install Linux.
On that note:
Can any of you name some hardware manufacturers that you’ve managed to get Linux working with? Particularly when it comes to graphics cards. I’d like to get the best that’s feasible under these constraints but will put Linux compatibility ahead of pure graphical fidelity.
I tend to run Linux on secondhand computers like a Lenovo ThinkCentre M92p workstation or a Thinkpad T60. I didn’t pay more than $200 for either of these, though I did spend additional money on memory and storage upgrades (like 1TB SSDs). Though you won’t do much gaming on a Thinkpad T60 unless you like Doom or classic roguelikes.
For gaming graphics, you’re less likely to have driver problems in Linux if you use Intel or AMD graphics. NVIDIA still keeps their drivers proprietary, and setting them up is a pain. At least, it’s a pain on Debian. The problem is that most Intel graphics chipsets aren’t really powerful enough for gaming, so you’ll want an AMD GPU.
The video’s kinda cool, but I would never recommend installing this because the install instructions are to grab a shell script with the wget tool that contains the following command.
This grabs another shell script and runs it to clone a git repository into your home directory and run more shell scripts. Some of these scripts require admin privileges since they install packages and make other changes to your system’s config.
It’s convenient enough if you’re proficient enough to read the scripts yourself, figure out what they do, and understand the risks involved, but I’d never recommend this to somebody new to Linux.
While DHH knows what he’s doing, and this is probably safe since he’s dogfooding it at 37signals, it’s made by developers for developers, and not necessarily suited to people who are new to Linux or just want a more stylish desktop than Ubuntu’s defaults.
Just adding onto this thread because my MacBook Air display died a tragic death. I ordered a cheap Acer laptop, got Mint installed, and I am waiting on a USB wifi adaptor to arrive since my wifi card that came with the computer won’t work with Mint.
It looks like I can play around with CSS in themes on Cinnamon? Excited to get to use my skills on something I see all the time, even if it’s just changing window border colors or whatever!
How are the other new Linux ppl doing after a couple months?
Recently started using my old intel macbook pro with linux mint on it again. All things considered mint serves my needs (occasionally playing games) well, but I have been wanting to get more comfortable with the terminal, so I got arch running on a virtual machine. I heard it requires a lot of checking for updates tho? And is overall more for those who are invested in it as a hobby, so I’m still looking at other distros.
Yeah, but I realised Mint’s default GUI was already convenient enough that I found myself not using the terminal much, so trying to download Arch was just sort of me forcing myself to use it :P
@sylviegirly
What distro did you end up with? Did you try some?
I mostly use linux to play around with my SOC (system on a chip) devices. Windows still has some advantages and if you rely on adobe products, windows still is the only option that works out of the box. Some companies are fighting for the windows “monopoly” by taking questionable actions.
So I still rely on windows and use it on a regular base. But I encourage everyone to try linux at least once, because a lot of distros are very user and newbie friendly.
I recommend mint for people switching from windows. It is hassle free in terms of setup and usage patterns are pretty close to windows when using gnome. It is suitable for gaming but there are more gaming focused distros. Mint is based on ubuntu but there is as well a debian based version named LMDE
For old machines antix is a great choice imho, you can revive any pre web3 era machines and even pre web 2 machines run great on antix.
Debian is a very nice and robust distro as well. Great for server owners as well as desktop users. Many server owners prefer debian but ubuntu has a high market share as well. Btw. ubuntu is based on debian
