Hello I’m Doctor_Rex I’m the OP of this post:
My Windows 10 install broke, but I’m hesitant to switch to Linux.
I’d like to start by thanking everybody who responded to my questions. Your answers have helped a lot when it came to my worries on switching to Linux.
I’ve taken in a lot of your recommendations: Fedora, Fedora Kinoite, Nobara, Bazzite Linux, VanillaOS,
I’ve decided on Fedora Kinoite, as it has everything I want from a distro.
It was very kind of you all to answer my questions but after making that post and reading your answers new questions propped up.
These questions are a little more opinionated than the last ones, and a little better thought out, but please take some time to answer them.
Questions:
- Is Wayland worth using? Especially when you consider all the issues that may come from using an NVIDIA card.
Are there any real noticeable advantages/improvements to using Wayland over Xorg.
- Does bloat actually matter or is it just a meme?
Does bloat actually have a noticeable negative impact on your system or are people just over reacting/joking.
- What are some habits I should practice in order to keep my system organized and manageable?
Any habits or standards that I should abide by in order to save myself headaches in the future?
- Any other resources besides the Arch Wiki that I should be aware of?
Self explanatory.
- What do you wish you knew when you first started using Linux that would have saved you a headache in the future?
I’m not referring to some skill but instead something pertaining to Linux itself. Feel free to skip this question.
I’ll be going to sleep soon, so apologies if I don’t reply but please take a moment answer any questions you think you can.
Thank You!
Edit: AUR = Arch Wiki. Fixed a typo
1) Is Wayland worth using? Especially when you consider all the issues that may come from using an NVIDIA card. Are there any real noticeable advantages/improvements to using Wayland over Xorg.
If you have an Nvidia card you’re probably best sticking to Xorg for now. I’m currently running Xorg with Gnome 45 since I have a GTX 1060. As I understand it Wayland is better at handling refresh rates across multiple monitors, as well as DPI scaling. These are minor issues compared to having everything working smoothly. I do feel like Xorg is on the way out now however, and I expect to switch off of it in a year or two.2) Does bloat actually have a noticeable negative impact on your system or are people just over reacting/joking.
It’s mostly just a meme. It certainly won’t slow you down. What it does do is take up space on your hard drive and in your menus. I do understand taking pleasure in ensuring that your system is trimmed down to only what you really need. But don’t worry about it at all.3) What are some habits I should practice in order to keep my system organized and manageable?
The same habits you have on Windows. Keep your files and folders in order. Beyond that there’s not much you need to worry about, especially with Kinoite.4) Any habits or standards that I should abide by in order to save myself headaches in the future?
Not that I can think of off the top of my head. Most important is leaning to RTFM, meaning go read the documentation for your distro (or just look at the Arch wiki) when you have an issue. If you run into a problem and need to ask for help, make sure you don’t do the XY problem.5) Any other resources besides the AUR that I should be aware of?
I don’t think Fedora Kinoite supports AUR, that’s an Arch Linux thing. You’ll be getting 99% of your apps from Flatpak.6) What do you wish you knew when you first started using Linux that would have saved you a headache in the future?
A long time ago I made a thread that got shared around a bit about how I thought the command line was pushed by Linux anoraks who didn’t understand the needs of the common user. I’ve used Linux a lot since then and I’ve changed my perspective: the command line is your best friend. It lets you do exactly what you want to do very quickly. It’s fast, it’s efficient, it’s beautiful. If you learn it a whole world of additional tools command line tools will open to you (ssh, grep, etc). There’s a reason that places like /c/unixporn love pictures of open terminals with neofetch loaded up.Thank you for answering.
spoiler
Just to be clear the AUR thing was just a typo, I meant to type arch wiki mb.
I’d like to ask you some clarifying question.
-
Linux uses the File System Hierarchy which Windows does not use. How do I keep my system organized while keeping to the FSH.
-
This isn’t really a question but my thoughts on your answer.
I really like the command line. I enjoy using it more than GUIs, but I don’t think the terminal should be pushed to the common user for mass adoption. Many of my friends don’t own desktop computers, some don’t own any other computer besides their phone. When I introduced them to my desktop, they were typing at less than 20 wpm with 2 fingers. No matter how great of a product Linux becomes in the future, It won’t see mass adoption as long as
A) non consumer friendly UX gets pushed and
B) There is no marketing force behind it
I really only learned of and got into Linux because SomeOrdinaryGamer and r/Unixporn. These were my first positive introductions to Linux. On my marketing point, Android, for example, has side loading, Fdroid, and lots of options for customizability, yet iOS is still the dominant market share and is continuing to grow.
If Linux want true mass adoption then there must be a real effort to make the command line as optional as possible, or the linux community must start trying to appeal to the types of people that would give Linux a shot if they new it existed. Returning to SomeOrdinaryGamer, that man gets millions of views per month and I seriously doubt most of them are Linux users.
Linux uses the File System Hierarchy which Windows does not use. How do I keep my system organized while keeping to the FSH.
Altogether it’s actually not that different from Windows, it’s just shuffled around a bit. You’ll have your /home/yourusername/ folder, which is where you’ll put most of your files. If you have more than one hard drive in your machine you can mount it under /mnt/ and then store the files on it as you would normally. You don’t have to worry about where your programs are stored (your package manager will take care of that for you).re: the command line
For the most part I agree, but I also think it’s a solved problem. A linux install with Gnome is on par with Mac OS when it comes to user friendliness, with no need to ever look at a terminal in order to do things. The UX here is nearly a solved issue. However I also feel that “growth” or “mainstream success” is no longer something I feel like I need linux to achieve. When I started using Linux in 2009 half of the programs I tried were pale copies of proprietary software. WINE barely worked. Game support was almost non-existant. WiFi drivers were genuinely almost always broken. Flash forward fifteen years and all of these issues are fixed. Using Linux on a day to day basis makes me happy, I no longer feel like I’m missing out on anything by using it. That is such an incredible leap to take. The key takeaway is that all of these problems were solved without Linux becoming “mainstream”. It and the community around it have just kept moving along and making it better over time. It’s been lovely to watch it grow like that. A fully-featured and powerful terminal is just one part of this fantastic, open computing environment that I love.As an additional note to this, I do think that Linux is poised to really take off among one particular demographic: PC gamers that build their own machines and can now finally see a good alternative to forking over $150 to Microsoft for their OS. The Steam Deck has definitely turned heads here. I don’t think the legions of people buying laptops to take notes during university lectures and browse Facebook (the “20 wpm typers” out there) will be very interested in Linux machines no matter what we do, so let’s focus the energy where it counts.
Not something that you asked, but please remember that most of the distribution managers know FAR more about the system than you do. If at all possible, be sure to follow the recommendations at DontBreakDebian (adapted to your system of course), to make sure you have a stable system.
That means things like avoiding whenever possible installing from random sources or changing settings that you don’t really understand. Whatever you do, don’t try to change anything about the kernel, graphics drivers, or standard libraries / shared packages unless you’re absolutely certain you know what you’re doing.
Windows has a filesystem hierarchy. It’s super similar to the *nix filesystem hierarchy because that’s what Microsoft mimicked with nominal differences.
/home/username is the same as \users\username
/bin is similarly what \windows is.
/sbin is \ProgramFiles
/etc is your windows registry. Only you can easily edit it with nearly anything. And it’s generally hyper documented. Unlike the windows registry.
Gnome and KDE both provide fairly polished GUI for 80% or more of what an average user is likely to need to encounter. There is generally no need to sideload. In fact, the concept doesn’t really exist. You are the system admin. You are root. There is no one to circumvent on your system but yourself. 90% of the software you could ever want will be within a distros repository. But these days you can download app images, flat packs, etc. That allow programs to be run on multiple different systems as long as they’re binary compatible. Because those containers pull along all dependencies needed to run said applications. But even then depending upon the app etc you can still pull from other distribution, repositories etc sometimes . Under Arch. I have had things installed from the aur that turned out to be Deb files that it downloaded extracted and then dropped the files in the right place. However, that can only be done when required libraries are met. If the versions differ by too much. Which can easily happen between different versions of the same distribution, let alone other distributions. That won’t work. It’s like the missing dll files under Windows.
The Wayland xorg issues. If you need “just works” that’s going to still be Xorg for a while to come. Though many distributions are moving to Wayland being a first class choice since it has come far enough. I have only had Wayland issues with two programs ATM. And only one of those is common, and the issue mostly cosmetic. Window decorations missing on Firefox. And that may be down to my chosen window decorations. The other is an obscure 3d game primarily made for Windows since 2004. That does have a Linux version. But under Wayland currently it goes seizure mode.
Linux already has mass adoption. (Servers) Desktop adoption is only a hurdle because of monopolistic anti competitive practices from Microsoft and Apple. A lot of that specifically due to momentum from Microsoft. They actively punished integrators that attempted to ship any OS but windows. And it’s largely stuck around that way. A lot of the first party SI that still exists offer zero non windows solutions to home users to this day because of it. There are SI that do provide it. But they are often rather niche and fairly unknown. System 76 being one of them. It’s very little to do with command line etc. Only when system integrators all start offering it as a general choice will the home user see much change.
-
Is Wayland worth using?
For a first dive into the Linux ecosystem, I recommend Xorg. I use Wayland myself (Hyprland), and that’s why I know that it’s simply not ready for general adoption. There are many features that are missing, won’t be implemented, or are done much differently compared to X. Some say Xorg is old and bloated - I say it’s a mature technology.
There are also some applications that need root privileges to work (Veyon Configurator is one that I struggled a lot with) and you have to do some weird
pkexechackery to launch them.Wayland’s development has more drama and bickering than an average sitcom - I recommend Brodie Robertson’s channel if you’re interested.
advantages/improvements to using Wayland
Wayland is better for gaming. It has a noticeably lower latency because the entire Wayland stack is implemented in a single program (what they call the compositor) as opposed to several in the X11 stack (X server, compositor, window manager) that need to communicate with each other. Unfortunately Steam and some other applications often produce graphical artifacts on Wayland+Nvidia.
Does bloat actually matter
Compared to Windows, it is insignificant. My work laptop is a Macbook Air from 2015 running Linux Mint on just 4G RAM without issues.
Any other resources besides the Arch Wiki that I should be aware of?
Install the
tldrprogram. It’s a bit likemanbut lists practical examples of a command instead of a full documentation.What are some habits I should practice
Make use of your home directory. Most user applications will have a config file in several places - usually in
~/.config(user config) and/etc(systemwide config). You should only edit the systemwide config when it makes sense, and always prioritize the user config.A common practice is to have your
/homedirectory on a different partition, or a different physical device. If the system breaks or you decide to distrohop, you can unmount/disconnect/homeand only wipe the root partition while retaining your user files.I also recommend using
Timeshiftto back up your system. It’s even better if your root partition uses btrfs since it natively supports snapshots.What do you wish you knew when you first started using Linux
I needed to leave the Windows ways behind me. On Windows, I had a hard drive mounted as F: and an external HDD mounted as H:. Moving to Linux (Manjaro at the time) was basically a snap decision since Windows had obliterated the boot partition during an update and then broke itself, and I
had no idea how to properly set up the filesystemdidn’t consider how I wanted to set up the filesystem, so I mounted them to/mnt/fand/mnt/hon a whim. It caused me many hours of headache later.One thing I would recommend is using a note taking app to create snippets of fixes or personalization changes for your OS that you’ve made. For me that includes things like how to add my laptop’s webcam to the blacklist and other things that I’d need to spend time looking up since I don’t do them that often.
- Is Wayland worth using? Especially when you consider all the issues that may come from using an NVIDIA card.
Short answer, no. There are advantages, but not worth it on an nvidia card. Wayland will replace Xorg very soon is a saying for over a decade, there’s reasons it hasn’t happened yet, nvidia is one of them.
- Does bloat actually matter or is it just a meme?
For starting up, just a meme, on the long run it’s nice to have a small system, but not that important i£ you have the disk to spare.
- What are some habits I should practice in order to keep my system organized and manageable?
Yes, the main one is “use the package manager”. The second one is keep your /home in a different partition.
- Any other resources besides the Arch Wiki that I should be aware of?
I would say that any community is also a good resource, since people are usually helpful.
- What do you wish you knew when you first started using Linux that would have saved you a headache in the future?
Set your /home to a different partition, I know I already mentioned this but it will save your ass the first t*me you break your system and have to reinstall.
Bloat is just a meme, it comes from a time when sysadmins would need to optimize every aspect of a system to get the most out of it (like not using vi, because it took up too much space/memory). You will never need to get that much performance out of your machine.
I try not to install programs all willy nilly. If I want to try something new, I’ll fire it up in a vm. I mean this about programs from 3rd party sources, and compiling from source. Anything in the repos is good and will uninstall cleanly too.
On fedora you get more programs through RPMfusion. It’s sort of official, but also not. And you can also check out the copr repository, this is more like fedora’s aur. Opensuse’s open build service also sometimes has packages that work for red hat systems.
When I first started I wanted Linux to work just like Windows. It took me a while to shift my perspective to the way Linux people do things. I don’t know how to speed up that process though.
I think it’s also worth noting that windows bloat and Linux bloat are not even in the same category. Even the heavier Linux distros are so light on system resources that installing a plethora of tools, games and assorted software isn’t going to effect your machine as negatively as it would in windows.
Some distro install and enable services that you would never use. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (and Fedora?) enable the cups printing daemon (I never do printing on Linux and I use a canon lbp 3300, I have to install drivers on windows). Ubuntu enable the openvpn service which “newbies” would never use.
But none of them have tmux installed by default, while OpenBSD have tmux, if I recall correctly NetBSD too
This would’ve saved me a headache!
From what I’ve heard. I’ve you have an Nvidia GPU the easiest thing you can do is to run Ubuntu. They have partnered up with nvidia and they provide you will all drivers you need right out the box.
It can be a hassle to sort out nvidia cards with certain distros.
Ubuntu is no magic bullet when it comes to nVidia. A lot of derivative distros like PopOS do it better anyway. And non-ubuntu OSs seem to have less problems anyway, IME. Manjaro and Nobara seem to get a long very well with nVidia cards.
That’s awesome! Thanks for sharing!
nVidia hosts its own repo for fedora and openSUSE. So on those you get direct driver from manufacturer. i found it made everything juat work, and the nVidia app has many config options
That sounds great to be honest!
It has been helpful for onboarding to linux. Everyone complaining about issues on other distros, and one OpenSUSE leap you just add a repo and check which card category you have. For openSUSE newbies here are some links.
For Leap
zypper addrepo --refresh 'https://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/leap/$releasever' NVIDIAand if for some reason you don’t want to type in a url you can add to the repos this wayzypper install openSUSE-repos-NVIDIATumbleweed is
zypper addrepo --refresh https://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/tumbleweed NVIDIAAnd if you wanted to Auto-detect and install driver per your card is
zypper install-new-recommends --repo NVIDIA
Does bloat actually matter or is it just a meme?
What is bloat. If I recall correctly fedora or RHEL (or both) enable the cups daemon even if you will not print anything. If I recall correctly Ubuntu enable openvpn service even you will never use it.
But it seems neither of them have tmux installed by default.
Feel free to test and correct me because I won’t bother those distro anymore.
Any other resources besides the Arch Wiki that I should be aware of?
arch wiki is a tutorial.
Manual pages are best, and if GNU hells put the documentation in info pages, you can install info.
If the manual page is unreadable and the program is part of the base system (on BSD all 3rd party “packages” are installed on /usr/local and base system is installed on / and /usr), try reading the BSD (OpenBSD) maintained documentation. They are also provided on-line.
What are some habits I should practice in order to keep my system organized and manageable?
The first is to drop all the things you learned in Windows. Many have no value, many are flawed and create bad habits, many are disposed.
New linux user often prefer GUI or menu instead of command line tool (what I mean is different, see the next sentence). They prefer to browser chromium and chat and typing this comment instead of taking time reading manual page, books, learn how to maintenance their system, even you need to learn how to INSTALL YOUR SYSTEM CORRECTLY!! You use ‘a’ huge a partition (sorry, root / partition) with an EFI partition and a /boot partition (and perhaps a /home partition too, and that’s the end?). No /usr, no /usr/local (this hierarchy is not used in Linux so keep it small), no /var, neither the /opt hell?
To keep your system organized and manageable, you first need KNOWLEDGE.
What to learn:
install and maintenance the system: partitioning, use your package manager (I hope you won’t read websites that have to teach you to use your package manager but the main topic is to use some software). Example: Absolute FreeBSD; Absolute OpenBSD (Michael W Lucas, although this is for FreeBSD and OpenBSD).
Learn not to wine (don’t run windows software on other operating system since it will need much kernel modification, OpenBSD explicitly refuse to do; I think running windows software on linux is unstable and insecure; I’m hostile with wine.)
UNIX programming: The UNIX programming environment; select some (like sed, awk) in the UNIX 7th edition manual pages, volume 2 which are tutorials that are still valid these day; manual page.
useful addition: get on tmux,
Enough for a regular user?
my personal habit:
I think I’m so lucky that I never do neofetch; once tried to decorate LXQt with the arc theme and then never used LXQt (since I switched to sway), if decorating the graphical interface make no sense to convenience I wouldn’t do (I myself hostile with unixporn or something like that, mean I never care about such community) and never created a colorful github’s myname/myname repo readme. (of course at the time I didn’t do learning since I’m chatting and being an discord terrorist)
What do you wish you knew when you first started using Linux that would have saved you a headache in the future?
I wish I could know what books to read
But when I know it’s too late (wasted 2 year using linux and learned almost nothing), and I have already switched to BSD. “Gần mực thì đen, gần đèn thì sáng.” (Near the ink you get darker, near the light you get brighter, that’s my poor translation.)
I highly recommend timeshift. It makes it easy to make system snapshots (think system restore points) at regular intervals so that if you try something and it breaks your system, you can restore it to a working state. It has saved me hours of work from all of the reinstalls that I didn’t have to do. I wish I had something like this when I first started out with Linux. It would have saved me dozens of Linux installs.
LearnLinuxTV is a pretty good YT channel for noobs
I recommend getting familiar with the following software:
- Quickemu (and quickgui) - super easy way to setup a Windows (or Linux or Mac) virtual machine
- Distrobox - easily run a different linux distro within your current linux distro. It’s useful for running ubuntu containers because of “PPAs” which are unofficial repositories which allow you to install some obscure software with a single command.
- Timeshift - someone else already mentioned it. I actually don’t know whether it would be a problem on an atomic distro like Kionite but I had Kubuntu break after a major update. Timeshift would have been useful at that time.
No, no, none, no, learn vim.
You might find something that works better or worse in Wayland, it’s not really a big deal
Does bloat actually matter or is it just a meme?
Both, the little things don’t matter but you can fill up your resources with bloat if you wanted.
Any habits or standards that I should abide by in order to save myself headaches in the future?
Update unless you have a reason not to
What do you wish you knew when you first started using Linux that would have saved you a headache in the future?
Sym-links
-
I never used Wayland but Xorg works really well.
-
Don’t copy terminal commands from internet if you don’t know what they do. Also, try new things just to try them. That’s how I started using many things that now make the core of my computer experience. Even if something looks scary I recommend giving it a go because in most cases it is much easier than it looks (at least when you have some experience with Linux).
-
YouTube can be a good resource at the start.
-
Switching to Linux was very smooth experience for me because I wanted to inform myself about Linux before switching just to know what I’m getting into. If you go prepared you probably won’t experience many problems.
Don’t copy terminal commands from internet if you don’t know what they do.
Very important. Don’t run arbitrary commands on the internet, but don’t paste sysctls and config too.
YouTube can be a good resource at the start.
Linux lacks much documentation. Man pages, tutorials from arch and gentoo wiki should be considered.
that’s my feedback
-
If you’re going to use nvidia, don’t even touch wayland. Truly an awful experience.
Bloat does matter it is extremely important, not because having a bunch of apps slows anything down or has any tangible impact in that regard. Because it isn’t as sexy as somebody’s hyper specific gentoo install compiled without some specific module.
The reason bloat is such a big deal, particularly if you’re new to it, is because it’s confusing. if you’re trying to fix a problem that you have run into / possibly contributed to, a dozen different programs running in the background that you didn’t put there is going leave you frustrated and disenfranchised.
Pick a modular distribution like Arch, take the loss that is your weekend putting it together and develop an understanding of how the pieces fit together. If you really don’t have time choose something like eg endeavourOS. ( or even Void is quite nice (but non systemd so less conventional))
I would personally recommend avoiding something like fedora or Debian. They are both fantastic distributions that work very well. They are not good at teaching new users how to fix problems and that should be your primary goal here.
deleted by creator
Using NVIDIA please use the image from ublue.it, the official Fedora one can work but noveau is not ready. You can install Kinoite from Fedora though and give it a try, report your experience with noveau (should work and proprietary drivers are pretty scary) and then rebase to ublue (unsigned, reboot, signed, reboot)
Wayland is worth it, Plasma 6 will come out soon and primarily target it. It just works for me, always, I have like no problem with it. Flathub flatpaks always worked because they have loose permissions.
Xorg is an insecure mess and it is not maintained.
Also, give the Plasma 6 preview a try! and report bugs. Its like 99% ready.
Bloat: yes of course. Fedora Kinoite has none. If you install a few flatpaks, dont be scared by duplicate Libraries, they use deduplication to actually need less space.
Bloat matters as a huge LUKS drive is notably slower, but only a matter of seconds on an NVME/ any SSD. And yeah, please use LUKS, encrypting afterwards is not easy. Also use a Password that can be written in US QWERTY too, a bug in current Fedora Atomic, it doesnt use your native keyboard layout. Seems to be fixed on 40 (rawhide, Plasma 6 prerelease Version of Kinoite)
Habits:
- install huge apps like RStudio, an IDE, a programming environment etc. in a Distrobox. If you program hardware it needs to be a root distrobox, otherwise no USB access.
- if you git clone stuff, create a “Git” folder in your home, put that there. Guides never mention that.
- if you use Appimages, compiled apps, binaries; create a “Programs” folder in your home
- use Czkawka to find duplicate files
Resources:
What do you wish you knew when you first started using Linux that would have saved you a headache in the future?
- Fedora Kinoite (Ubuntu broke, stable Distros suck, …)
- use Flathub Flatpaks, they are often better
