Good morning With recent changes to the Windows platform I’ve decided to make the swap to Linux. While it’s not the first time I’ve tried it out I’m hoping to find the transition easier this time. I’m giving Mint a go and will try and make this my main OS. I will keep windows as a dual boot option for now just in case I have to do a task that I haven’t learned how to do with Linux.

So far I’ve managed to get steam running and tested a game I’d play to confirm it was working.

I suspect the biggest challenge will be terminal.

If anyone has any feedback or suggestions I’m open to them. Heck even funny moments when you first started. I still find when Linus nuked his setup very funny.

  • Canaconda@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    1 day ago

    I also switched to mint. Lot less hand holding than windows. For instance no “cannot complete operation” warning if you try to copy an unpaused torrent. The GUI even puts the icon in USB drive… but nothing is there.

  • ekZepp@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    3 days ago

    Mint is one of the best beginners distro. Just follow the initial popup guide and use the driver manager to enable all the hardware correctly. If everything works and is updated, then save a system snapshot ( you can find it in the updater setting). You can do all this without using the terminal, but in all honesty it is one of the more convenient feature in Linux. Just don’t go experimenting and copy/paste unknown source from the web in the beginning. Especially without a backup. Also, not all the distro commands will work, stick with the one made especially for Linux mint/Ubuntu.

    • Tantheiel@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      1 day ago

      It’s been interesting so far. I used it to install some programs instead of using the GUI interface.

      Did have to muck around to fix my HDMI audio latency issue. 1-3 seconds of not audio was a bit annoying.

      Managed to get my dual boot with windows setup so Linux is the default OS unless I tell it to do Windows instead.

      Even used it to shutdown the computer a few times just because I could.

      It’s not as bad or intimidating but I do know to be cautious.

      One bad SUDO and I can wipe something out.

  • jrubal1462@mander.xyzEnglish
    1·
    7 days ago

    I was 100% in the same boat as you, but it’s worked out awesomely so far. For me the biggest thing was that every time I was completely stumped by something randomly not working even though I was following internet instructions pretty closely…it was a freaking permissions problem. Random shit with no clear error message, just shit not working.

    Dive computer plugged in and turned on, but not connecting? It says “timed out” but what it really meant was"this program doesn’t have dialout privileges, so even though it looks like we’re trying, we’re actually not letting anything go through until you add it to the right group"

    Plex library showing empty even though you just spent hours transferring stuff over? Plexmediaserver isn’t being dumb, it’s just its own user, and even though YOU have access to the library folder and can point Plex there, that doesn’t mean Plex can see anything in there.

    I could go on but you get the point.

  • just_another_person@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    9 days ago

    You won’t need a terminal unless you refuse to use the GUI tools that do the same thing.

    If you want to use the terminal, go for it and use the default. If you eventually find it lacking THEN start investigating different options.

    Just use everything as you normally would otherwise, and you shouldn’t notice a huge shift.

  • Diplomjodler@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    9 days ago

    The standard terminal in Mint is perfectly fine. You won’t ever need anything else unless you become a system operator taking care of data centers worth of machines. It’s definitely worthwhile getting into, even if you don’t strictly need it. Just watch a few introductory videos and get sudoing. The chances you’ll break something are pretty low, if you use common sense. Having said that, always back up your data before doing anything you’re not 100% certain about.

  • Attacker94@lemmy.worldEnglish
    41·
    9 days ago

    The number one shock for most people when coming over to Linux is a reliance on package management for programs rather than the exe’s & msi’s of windows. In general on mint your installation methods in order should be

    1.software manager 2.appimage 3.deb 4.tar

    I may have forgotten some other formats since I haven’t used mint in a while, but this should allow for the smoothest experience when it comes to installing programs.

  • Strider@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    9 days ago

    Once you get the hang of a shell, it’s way better and more productive than ui for a lot of things.

    Especially the piping.

  • promitheas@programming.devEnglish
    2·
    8 days ago

    My advice is to plan for eventually ditching windows completely. Use it in the beginning while youre learning, for tasks that you need to get done but dont know how on linux, but once you get comfortable with the general linux stuff, i recommend ditching the crutch of windows. That way youll be forced to use linux, which is the only way youll learn how to do those things on it.

    Its so much more convenient to have just one system, and also windows has been known to mess up linux installs (replaces bootloader with its own m$ one which doesnt recognise linux. Not too bad to fix but its a pain you dont need for ever)

    • Tantheiel@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      2·
      8 days ago

      Agreed. I’m working towards that goal. I think the biggest hurdle is if a game runs on Windows but not as well on Linux I might opt to finish the game on Windows. Even with proton I did find a game I was playing recently was noticeably lower quality or “laggy”

  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    9 days ago

    “I suspect the biggest challenge will be terminal.”

    Ha ha ha

    Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

    HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

    …yes. That is correct.

  • one_knight_scripting@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    8 days ago

    Welcome!

    If you think the biggest challenge is going to be the terminal then how about a fun little game that will make you more familiar. It is a quite basic game that focuses on some of the commands that are used frequently in Linux.

    I assume you already know the package/update commands of course.

    https://overthewire.org/wargames/bandit/

    I gotta say, with all the nonsense about using ai to analyze notepad and every PC is now a copilot ai PC, this feels like the year of Linux. I made the switch myself to Arch(hyprland) and personally discovered how much I love tiling Windows managers.

    In case you’re not aware, btrfs is amazing. I run snapshots on my days every hour. This works for my personal data and protects me if an update goes sideways.

    And finally, I’m unsure about Mint, but on Arch, flatpak has been amazing for installing software. It installs as a tenant of your PC with limited privileges.

    Also, since you mentioned steam, you may wish to look at gamescope in order to utilize the full steam deck ui.

    • Tantheiel@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      1·
      8 days ago

      I’ll check that link this weekend when I have more time.

      I have limited experience with terminal. I used it to update Mint last year when I tried but had to read a lot of forums just to know what to type.

      I have no idea what btrfs is or gamescope. I’ll look them up soon.

      I did find the flat pak to help install programs and got a few loaded already.

      • one_knight_scripting@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        8 days ago

        Btrfs is a partition type/filesystem. It is meant to solve two problems.

        One, it is meant so you can combine partitions from multiple drives (similar to raid 0,1, or 10). Technically it is capable of raid 5, but lacks reliable performance.

        Two, it also provides reverse incremental snapshotting capabilities. Good for backing up data.

        I’m using it in combination with grub-btrfs so if an update fails, I can boot from a snapshot to fix it without a live cd or reinstall.

        Gamescope is what runs on a steam deck in gaming mode. I have my gaming PC configured to use gamescope for HDR gaming.

        Finally, the link I sent is technically a war game. It is more meant to teach you to keep things secure more than anything else. In short you will control one of their cloud hosted machines over ssh and they hid the password somewhere on it. In order to win, you need a few commands: cat, vim, cd, ls, and git. It introduces them as you go. Eventually, I think it escalated to using netcat, honestly I stumbled through that part, and the git part too.

        I’m not sure if mastering the terminal is a goal of yours, but I use tools to make it significantly easier. Instead of bash, I use ZSH. Combine that with Oh-my-zsh for theming and plugins(I like zsh-autocomplete, zsh-autosuggestions, zsh-syntaxhighlighting, fast-syntaxhighlighting), and zoxide to replace cd.

        When it comes to updating, it can be different per distribution. Mint uses apt, typically you will need:

        sudo apt update # Gets the latest version number of each package
sudo apt upgrade # Install the latest version of each available update

        Apt is the package manager of most device based installation.

        Yum/Dnf are the primary package managers for fedora and Red hat distros.

        There are a few others, but I’ve gotten off topic enough.

        Regardless, it is good to see someone joining the community. If you need any help with anything feel free to reach out to us, you are not in this alone. And if ever you can’t figure out a command, try running it with --help. Ex:

        ls --help
cd --help
cat --help
  • jimmy90@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    8 days ago

    if you have a fairly modern computer with a gpu and > 8gb ram i would give bazzite a go

    it’s very friendly for new users, as it protects the core operating system and let’s you rollback changes and updates, and also makes gaming of all kinds very easy