Insights

Sooooo, I just finally made the switch from Plindows garbage bag OS to BASED linux mint. (trying out what I thought was approachable) And I was wondering if you fine ladies and gents had any ideas for a first time user. Any comments, resources, links, suggestions would be greatly appreciated. And the only questions I have to ask is what any long time users think I should do first, what I should look into or learn about the system first, and what insights you have had while learning and mastering the system? Thanks a bunch, I really love this imageboard and community here. You all are great!

>>64840 I've been using Linux Mint for about two years now, I think, It was definitely difficult, as it's my first Linux system. I would definitely run into problems, which just isn't really acknowledged by the "Mint is Linux Windows" guys. I remember being really frustrated with the "Drawing" program. I knew how to use Microsoft Paint, but the Drawing program was weird. I basically had to learn how to use that from scratch, just for my basic copy-pasting-cropping necessities. Beyond that, I don't feel I've learnt anything new, and I would say I'm quite comfortable on Mint, and this is coming from someone that still has yet to learn how to use the terminal. Indeed, it seems a lot of websites, when explaining how to install software, will include a Linux version, with guides on what steps to follow, so it seems the writers are aware of people like us. That's nice.

First of all what do you want to learn about ? Here are some general suggestions... I think the first big thing that will help you is to learn a text editor. this should be one in the cli and you should use it in the cli habitually. The best editors for new friends are vim and emacs, both have builtin tutorials that are pretty decent. install one or the other and get used to it well enough that you can open, edit, and save and close random existing files. Both have a lot of features that you may want to explore. Or if you just want something quick and dirty that works you can try nano. Another usefull tool is SSH, if you have other computers SSH enables you to remotely access and control them just as you might your local machine. if you have another computer on your network you can mess around with it, or maybe you have a server for a website or something I don't know. If you want to mess around with a bunch of linux distros but don't want to break your current install (or even if you do, haha), qemu is your friend. Qemu is a virtual machine software that lets you create and run all sorts of simulated computers on your computer. It even lets you network them together or to the internet, and personally I've had a lot of fun with it and learned a lot about linux through using it. One of the most important programs for learning about programms on your computer is called 'man', short for manual. You can run 'man ssh' in your terminal for instance to learn about the ssh program, assuming its installed. Some programs have big manuals but you can search through it with the / key. A website that's particularly handy also is the archwiki, here's their page on ssh: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/OpenSSH Even though you don't use arch, the wiki is mostly applicable outside of package management (pacman vs apt).

>>64843 >The best editors for new friends are vim and emacs no micro? It's objectively the best text editor. The simplicity of Nano combined with the vim-like commands and keybinds.

are you mr. headphones guy? just wondering >what any long time users think I should do first once you have everything installed, Start building a plain text list with the packages you'll want installed on your system (no need to include their dependencies too). apt-mark showmanual should help with that. also some sort of "cheatsheet" with cool but long commands you find; another option is to learn to write bash alias and just make a list of those so you can then copypaste them every time you desire to change distro or install a Linux-based OS on a new device. >what I should look into or learn about the system first apt, the linux filesystem hierarchy, some coreutils (cd,ls,mv,rm,ln), and the use of some simple tools like nano,htop,cat,curl,wget. Just remember to learn what you want to do with the system, you don't need to know every single parameter or use a certain tool may have. >>64843 mentioned man pages. they're great but just remember you also have other alternatives you can use, just choose the one that works better for you. you have: man info nameofthepackage --help curl cheat.sh/nameofthepackage >insights you have had while learning and mastering the system i'll just say that many years after starting using linux i still get surprised at how much one can do with the tools a common distro like mint brings by default, i keep discovering new uses for the tools i already knew and loved.