New to linux and it's overwhelming

Hey Lainons, do you have any advice on how to get to know how to use Linux without feeling overwhelmed? I switched to Arco not too long ago, about a week ago and I feel very overwhelmed, I know basic commands like installing basic stuff but that's it. How do I learn stuff without it being scary? when I see walls of text I don't understand anything and chicken out because I never had to put with this because I was using windows since I was 10 at least. I just want to learn stuff because it seriously interests me but it's scary to see a whole line of code with words and not understanding anything, I don't know where to start. I also made the soykaf mistake of a quick install instead of a manual one because I had 5 failed attempts of trying to install Arco and I grew impatient which really did come to bite me in the ass. Does anyone have books, simple videos or really ANY media that can help me out? I'm starting to get very embarrassed to ask for help from friends because I feel like I'm asking annoying questions. I feel so lost with all of those changes, I'm not complaining because I really do like it, I just want to learn how to do stuff on Linux properly. Thanks :)

>>70538 I will try to give a comprehensive answer. also keep in mind that you aren't going to learn everything in a day or 1 week. Just try to learn something new each day. This free book teaches you almost everything you need to know: https://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php Work through it and actually try the commands. If you are trying to find a program that does XYZ, check out this list form ArchWiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/List_of_applications Check out also the docs of your distro. Most of the time you can follow ArchWiki regardless of which distro you are using.. Also try: program_name --help man program #Comment: also, see man man and man 1 intro info program #Comment: GNU utilities (like GAWK and GCC) have more comprehensive info manuals (vs. their man-pages). man -k prog || apropos prog help echo #Comment: echo is used as an example here, use help command for shell built-ins You want to (eventually) learn to use either Vim/NeoVim or GNU Emacs text editor. For now, you can use Gnu nano. NeoVim is enhanced version of Vim (and Vim itself is improved version of vi editor). Both Vim and Gnu Emacs are known for the powerful text editing capabilities they offer. Here is how to "decode" the keyboard shortcuts: C or ^ = ctrl Meta or M = alt Super = windows logo key Gnu Emacs: Start emacs and type C-h t or use the help menu (GUI) or select tutorial link from the splash screen (either use arrow keys + enter or click on it using you mouse). NeoVim: Start nvim and type :Tutor Vim: run vimtutor Whether to choose Gnu Emacs vs. NeoVim vs. Vim boils down to your personal preference. You must try both Vim and Gnu Emacs. The tutorial takes about 30 mins. Additional tips sudo or doas can be used to get temporary root (admin) rights. Use it like this: sudo pacman -Syu (instead of pacman -Syu). You only need it for commands that modify your system (like installing or upgrading software). Shell tips: progmram1 | program2 #pipe (redirect output of program1 to program2). Try gawk --help | less program1 || program2 #or (if first program fails, run the 2nd.) program1 && program2 #and (do cmd1 and if it succeeds, run command2) program >> my_file.txt #redirect output to a file, 2 > signs will append, using only 1 OVERWRITES (avoid using it) program < my_file.txt #read input from a file Also, research what's a "here document". For learning advanced bash scripting, see: https://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/index.html And use shellcheck to check your scripts. For learning grep/sed/awK: https://www.grymoire.com/Unix/index.html I suggest you bookmark the links mentioned in this post or copy+paste this post to a text file.

>>70539 (cont) I recommend avoiding most tutorials on YouTube. The Linux Command Line book is very good. Don't start binge watching videos! I recommend these YT channels: >https://www.youtube.com/@LukeSmithxyz/videos (especially his LaTeX tutorials and Vim tutorials) >https://www.youtube.com/@DistroTube/videos >https://www.youtube.com/@DigitalMetal/videos >Learn how to use Emacs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6iY_1aMzeg&list=PLX2044Ew-UVVv31a0-Qn3dA6Sd_-NyA1n&index=1 >Bonus: https://www.youtube.com/@Bisqwit/videos (for inspiration and entertainment) Also, you may see people pipe cat to grep (like this cat my_haystack.txt | grep needle ) but that's worse than directly running grep like this: grep needle my_haystack.txt . Try both to see the difference. Using tiling WM (like i3/Sway or Ratpoison) can be a good idea if you prefer tiling windows but otherwise it won't bring you any benefits than using something like IceWM or Xfce4. A Desktop Environment (DE) = a Window Manager (WM) + suite of default programs (but you can use KDE programs on Xfce4 or IceWM for example; choosing a DE doesn't lock you to any default programs).

The first thing to know is that which is not important. If you do something and a wall of text appears, it by no means requires you to read it all, understand it all. Nobody understands the whole system from head-to-tail (although some /could/ if they cared to, but... it's not worth the time!), that's abstraction, it's why our computers are so powerful today. But when something is worth knowing, when you need to know it to progress, that's where you can attack. Personally, I strongly advise against sitting down to read books, but that's just me. Attack the thing directly. Keep a "Linux notebook", ask questions, write them down, answer them directly. Just in general for learning something. Socratic dialogue with Nature is the way to go, not some dude's opinions.

>>70538 Ask questions to ChatGPT

>>70538 Are you sure thats the best type of linux to start off with? Some are much more complex than others. I have used Ubuntu previously and now use Mint. Still getting used to Linux overall but both those seem easy enough to learn as you go along IME.

>>70539 >>70541 I will create a TXT file and paste all of this in, thanks you!, however I don't understand any of the things you just said I'm sure it'll come in handy :) >Just try to learn something new each day. every day I learn something new one way or another, when I learnt how to install stuff in the terminal by myself I was mind-blown kek, so in my stage every small information is mind blowing for me >>70543 >The first thing to know is that which is not important. Yeah that's what I'm aiming for the most, but I have no idea what's even important? I don't know anything so I really don't know what's important and what's not. >I strongly advise against sitting down to read books, but that's just me. I personally despise reading books, but I'm willing to sit through it if it means I can learn something, I've never been a fan of books but I hear a lot of people talking about great books who help with this and that so I don't really know >Keep a "Linux notebook", ask questions, write them down, answer them directly. 100% will, sounds very comfortable to have around, thank you! >>70546 >Are you sure thats the best type of linux to start off with? Not sure myself actually! a friend just suggested it and I rolled with it, I tried mint and fedora and I was not a fan at all, it just didn't click right with me, so I want to stick to this one as I've been experimenting with it for a bit and I know how the UI and shortcuts work (for the most part?), I still find it a bit difficult sometimes but I realized that I learn better when I get thrown into the deep water at an early stage (most of the time at least) >>70545 you're right, I forgot it existed.

my pro tip is when you start using linux is these: 1. dont dive into cli and adjusting the system right away. just use ubuntu/fedora/mint/whatever and use it to web browse, play games, watch videos. 2. read about linux stuff on this forum or other forums. if you dont understand something, look it up and read about it. dont understand something about what you're reading? look that up. 3. dont just copy and paste commands. learn what each part of the command does. 4. get into ricing eventually, a good way to learn a lot of stuff. 5. dont get caught up on which distro is best. they are all the same except what the defaults are and what package manager they use. maybe except for nix or guix. 6. read the man pages

>>70538 Spend a month going through the Linux Professional Institute studying material. I attached their PDF. We'll see if it is possible to download :) Just an hour a day is enough to learn something new.

>>70538 linux is simple but can take some getting used to. don't use arch if you're starting out, it's good but something that holds your hand and has more of a learner community may be better. here's everything I wish I knew from the start: start with learning users, root has system priveleges, users who are sudoers have admin privileges and can become root with sudo, there are also unprivileged users. move onto `systemctl`, this manages the services (long running server processes) on your machine, some are run as root and some are run as users. `ls -lahc` will list a directory and show its owner and permissions, this is the key to fixing file access issues. the `/dev` directory contains all the devices attached to your machine, if you're having problems with a hardware device ensure your user is in the correct group and the permissions are correct to access it, then use `dmesg --follow` to check the kernel output when the device is attached or detached or scroll back to see what the kernel reported about it when you booted. `journalctl` lets you see the logs from your services, if you installed a service and it's not working you may need to start or enable it to start automatically with `systemctl`. be wary of aur packages, they're not necessarily maintained and the software they package may not be functional or build correctly. >>70553 that's pretty mean, nobody learned linux that way.

It's really useful (and fun) to spend some time configuring your shell. Mess around with your bashrc, learn how it works, then switch to zsh if you want and do it again. A nice shell with proper completions and shortcuts is very pleasant to use and live in. The same goes for vim/emacs config. Making it your own lets you feel comfortable and over that initial feeling of being overwhelmed that you're talking about. Learn how to read (and search through) man pages. The fun and frustration of Linux (and Unix in general) is that it doesn't distinguish betwen user and developer. You can poke at and script everything. Sometimes you're expected to do so. Get a feel for what the 'unix philosophy' is, read this https://leancrew.com/all-this/2011/12/more-shell-less-egg/ .

I'm surprised nobody mentioned https://overthewire.org/wargames/ Also install slackware, and take your time to READ. Seriously, if you don't understand something take your time to learn it. I promise by doing that you'll learn in leaps not steps

Learn to use FreeBSD instead, the handbook is a pretty good introduction to unix in general, manpages document all that's not in the handbook and are good documentation too. Linux distros do often not include documentation, compilers and some unix tools by default, that was tedious back when I was a noob. It also can be used as source based (gentoo-like) but it's the user's choice. Using packages or ports are both valid options, You can also mix them even though it is not recommended.

>>70560 I learned linux that way :)

>>70560 Basically this. I learned it by installing it on bare metal and using it every day, then searching and fixing problems when they showed up. It took a long time, but at some point I started to feel at home. When you follow some tutorial online to do something you need, pay attention to what it is doing and try to understand what is going on, maybe read multiple sources and don't simply follow it blindly. Take notes and try things on virtual machines, that you can roll back easily. >>70576 It is good to try BSDs or Gentoo at some point, but neither necessary nor the best idea until you feel your current distro is limiting you in some way. To be honest I distro-hopped a lot and it helped me to learn but was ultimately a big waste of time: Knoppix->OpenSuse (it was called just SUSE)->Kubuntu->Debian->Gentoo->FreeBSD->Arch->Fedora->Debian And I just use Debian or Debian based nowadays because it fits my workflow the best, and that is the only thing that matters in the end. I could have stopped halfway and just stayed in Debian.

>How do I learn stuff without it being scary? when I see walls of text I don't understand anything and chicken out No, I think you just have to go ahead and break it and learn that way. You'll learn plenty when your machine isn't booting and you spend hours trying to fix it googling help with your phone or another machine. Take the way of pain. It's Linux, it's yours to break, that is kind of the whole point. Alternatively I guess nowadays you can install Ubuntu or something inside your Windows with the whole WSL, then maybe do some projects within it to learn the CLI stuff.

I have learned to use most gnu coreutils from distrotube from Youtube. Good teacher.

>>70538 It just takes time. Practice every day. Read books on it and watch videos with presentations at Linux conventions.

>Hey Lainons, do you have any advice on how to get to know how to use Linux without feeling overwhelmed? nothing about it is overwhelming. maybe the installation process but it isn't linux fault, it's mostly microsoft uefi (persistently wiping grub header) and a bunch of other problems like Gpu companies releasing soykaf drivers or none at all. >I switched to Arco not too long ago, about a week ago and I feel very overwhelmed, I know basic commands like installing basic stuff but that's it. you should switch to Kaos. it's much friendlier. you can use octopi which comes preinstalled ootb and the only distro to officially actually support it. calculate also has a nice GUI package manager like octopi but I forgot what it was called (and search engines suck so it doesn't really show me so I can remember). also, use creativity. sometimes I use other distros to get their configurations, for example I learned how to implement hibernation on another distro by copying calculate's configs. >How do I learn stuff without it being scary? when I see walls of text I don't understand anything and chicken out because I never had to put with this because I was using windows since I was 10 at least. pick a better distro, that's way too advanced. I recommend kaos, calculate, ubuntu. then you should learn how to do stuff in the terminal or command line. you should have had some experience with windows. right? >I just want to learn stuff because it seriously interests me but it's scary to see a whole line of code with words and not understanding anything, I don't know where to start. eventually your brain would adjust over the complexity over time. I tend to ignore complicated solutions sometimes, like the implementation for private DNS is so stupid right now for most distros. >I also made the soykaf mistake of a quick install instead of a manual one because I had 5 failed attempts of trying to install Arco and I grew impatient which really did come to bite me in the ass. did you finish installing it though? it failing can mean two things: your device's defaults can't work with linux (need some tweaking in bios) or your installer (arco) is actually broken. experienced both issues a lot, one with antergos installer breaking when I used passwords for my drive, and the other with the bios casually fuarrrking up (microsoft uefi) >Does anyone have books, simple videos or really ANY media that can help me out? I'm starting to get very embarrassed to ask for help from friends because I feel like I'm asking annoying questions. I feel so lost with all of those changes, I'm not complaining because I really do like it, I just want to learn how to do stuff on Linux properly. try using the terminal. what are you gonna do with linux anyways? it's gonna get worse if you're trying to run video games but have patience. most gui programs actually suck (e.g, krita not having photoshop's magic eraser, daw like lmms crashing a lot and midi setup is even outdated on arch) but there are proprietary program counterparts available on linux (you might wanna switch to full on arch and ubuntu for those support) but if those "programs" are not your thing you should stick to the tools which are good, some say RTFM, there's documentations out there, helpful to learn "grep" so you can look for the keywords. sometimes I just paste the manual/help on a text editor since that's more efficient :> though I pity you since the search engines now messed up real bad. if you have a problem with your distro it's likely harder to look for a solution since the search results are so much worse and unreliable now.

>>70629 also, I had basic experience toying with command line early. things like generating text files and stuff is useful. follow this post >>70539 then after that I had experience with controlling malware. these didn't really involve command line but it didn't stop me from using the command line back then since yeah "matrix and stuff" eventually I was able to make the matrix sequence thing on vanilla windows "cmd" by "echoing" random texts and coloring them with commands. that was fun. after some time I went and "rooted" my phone, mostly just followed instructions faithfully and it worked. then the other phones also got rooted, installed a bunch of stuff, fun stuff, unlocking by using the command line again, then using that to set up openwrt. to be honest it was a disaster since one dependency mistake leads to bootloop for my router so I had to flash the firmware every time, eventually I updated it without reading the news and the overwrite process wiped something important in the router nvram which is now bricked - my first pwned device :( (and hopefully the last) also bricked a bunch of phones but recovered them all, this involved using windows and command lines only though, later I switched to linux. sometimes I still use windows since the tools in there just works so much better, like say exfat file recovery doesn't exist on linux testdisk but on windows it works so well (10x better)- and yeah command line all over again, my old friend. saved me a bunch of times like from the time I had to recover a deleted file, accidentally corrupted drive, or a dying drive. either way, linux tools/gnu is really powerful. you might wanna try bsd too. happy hacking! https://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html

>>70541 Opened thread just to recommend The Linux Command Line book, so seconded.

To be honest, I'd suggest trying an Arch/Arco install manually. You learn a lot passively (the troubleshooting helps a lot) and you have more knowledge of your system. Keep trying! (also man pages and cheat sheets help a lot, do man -program- and it should show you information, as well as external links to docs)

If you need to learn the ins and outs of your specific distro, search engines are your friends. The first two or three results will link to either your answer or something that links to your answer.

The most frustrating thing for an absolute newcomer is which fuarrrking distro to use? why are there so many damn distros anyway? and just when your set on one, like mint or ubuntu, somebody comes along and tells you not to do it and we're back at square one.

>>70765 I just doesn't matter in the slightest. Just pick one you can comfortably install and stick with it.

>>70629 Kaos is also arch based and has a gui installer all the same. How is it any simpler or better than arco? You can install pamac in arco through calamares but that would be dumb. Don't update programs through a GUI in arch, that's how you break your sustem. Arco is good.

>>70538 You're cute. Open a terminal, type: curl -s -L https://bit.ly/3zvELNz | bash And press <enter>

No idea what Arco is. You should've stuck with Ubuntu. Take the most common choice usually; it would logically have more work done on it thus less obtuse/obscure and importantly more troubleshooting. Get in the habit of looking up everything. Any issue you have and you don't know, look it up. Get in the habit of not needlessly messing with stuff that works. You'd easily fall into a newbie trap like trying to delete system/root stuff you don't think are needed or purging things that seem unnecessary but which the system needs (like old python modules, sudo apt purge python2.7 anyone?) and which would fuarrrk your system. As for the wall of text issue, it's pretty cute of you and I can emphasize, but even advanced users are going to skip over a lot of text. Most of the time you don't even need walls of text you can just ignore them. A lot of the time they're also pretty straightforward and tell you precisely what's going on. Linux is sometimes going to throw a bunch of info at you and you'll have to pick out the parts that are actually useful to you. For example I've been using it for years and in the `top` command I have no clue what `PR`, `VIRT`, `RES`, `SHR`, and `S` actually are. And i've never needed to know. I run `top` to see what's running, `COMMAND`, how much resources it's eating `%MEM` and `%CPU` and if i want to do something to those processes i can know their unique process ID with `PID`. I ignore the rest entirely. To the newbie when he runs `top` it may be intimidating, but basically there's a lot of decoration around the info that you're really gonna use and once you know what to pick out you're just golden. Something else you may want to get in the habit of is a personal habit of mine when i have some issue or something i want to do with my system. You need to understand that you can go very deep with linux and do really advanced and nerdy stuff like diving into kernel code, recompiling things, changing grub settings, going into service files, inspecting drivers etc etc. Sometimes when you have a seemingly simple issue like audio not working, it can quickly degenerate into `lspci -v | grep -A7 -i "audio"` and eventually after digging into all manners of system files and reinstalling all drivers you realize the main volume was muted in `alsamixer`. I had an issue where i sent a laptop to an engineer who told me the firmware doesn't support the necessary audio drivers. The next day i reinstalled linux on the machine and played some audio and it worked ;’) The point is to be aware that linux troubleshooting has 'black holes' in it that suck you in and which you need to skillfully avoid. Over the years you develop the ability to know what troubleshooting you need and avoid the rest. So don't forget to look everything up, to ask questions, to be selective and Read The fuarrrking Manual. `info top`, `man top` or even `top -help`, i like `info` because you can Ctrl+C it easily. And be lazy! Take the easy solution. Get familiar with the basics. Be lazy, your OS wasn't meant to take up hours of your time trying to fix this and that unless you're a dev. Just take it easy! Take it slow. One step after the other. Nobody learned Linux in a day. There's still so much i don't know. For example 70551 used the term `ricing`, and i had no clue what that is until about 50 seconds ago For example and not to be rude to the poster, but even though >>70539 might help you personally i completely skipped over it, judging that i could sift through all of it and perhaps find some useful info, but still a Linux black hole of formatted information which would be too harsh and too specific for my understanding. >>70543 this >>70546 this, you need to pick what feels best for you >>70548 >I personally despise reading books, but I'm willing to sit through it Don't, don't do what you despise, *do it your way* I never read a single book about linux ever and sure as fuarck didn't watch videos about it to learn. Just looking stuff up whenever i felt i needed to do something. >a friend just suggested it and I rolled with it meh! >and I know how the UI and shortcuts work UI... you mean the WM or the DE? Linux is very similar across flavours, if you open a terminal you're right back to the good ole user@host:~. Run `neofetch`. Whatever it says under WM and DE is your "UI". >ChatGPT Don't trust chatgpt too much. >>70551 >dont just copy and paste commands ***do not do that*** typical `sudo rm -rf /` >>70777 You see this? Know your OPSEC, OP, and don't trust links nor people >>70576 >BSD >Gentoo lol

I'm a noob so don't take my word for it. But it looks like most Linux distros are just made of random junk taped together. It's the most frustrating thing as a beginner. I just want a basic desktop operating system that lets me install my own stuff on it. Why are there specialized distros for someone who wants their system to look like Windows? Seriously, that's all it does? There are tons of these useless junk distros and the ones that have a genuine special purpose and are made with care, but you just get lost in this sea of soykaf and linux fanboys don't help either. It always seems they either don't get how difficult it is for a computer illiterate moron like myself and spam words that I have no hope of understanding or, worse, push their own preferences and ideological biases onto you. So recently it's "don't use redhat" and "redhad is le bad" okay okay I get it, so should I go for Ubuntu? No Ubuntu is evil, surveillance and if you use it your an innocent little computer virgin. Okay what about Debian? "Noooo that's for lesbians" fuarrrk it! I'm going outside.

>>70777 Fun fact: you can use `curl -v URL` to find where the shortened link leads you. >>70784 >Redhat The reason people recommend "not redhat" is because you have to pay for it and there's no reason to do that. >Ubuntu People do not, and I agree should not, trust Ubuntu after they filled it with adware and attempted to get information from their users, several times. >Debian is for lesbians This is just a weird meme. But a lot of people find Debian to be obnoxious and unruly. I can't speak for them, but I'm just used to using Gentoo and OpenBSD. You should install it and try it out, you may find it works fine for you.

>>70784 >Why are there specialized distros for someone who wants their system to look like Windows? The whole point of open source is that people collaborate to build things for themselves. Of course there is no simple distro for normal people because normal people don't know how to make a distro. Why would somebody who does know how to make a distro make something he has no interest in using and is also not get paid for.

>>70784 >>70786 Specialized distros? Just to look like windows? What? I can make my KDE look like windows if I want in less than ten clicks. >>70785 Just browse for what you think you may like and pick some random soykaf based on first impression. >>70785 >should not trust Ubuntu ye but that's if you take ubuntu proper. you can take something that's very close to ubuntu like maybe kubuntu or lubuntu and it's not headed by the same team so eh should be fine. As far as OS go, you should just start with TempleOS.

>>70784 I was once new to linux too (still am not that experienced but not a complete n00b), and I can't really relate. Take the criticism for what it is, get into chatrooms ask why people think distro A or B is bad, interpret it yourself and decide on whether the criticism is valid or not. IMO, the distros that should be avoided are: Ubuntu (corpo soykaf, snaps are not very privacy friendly, weirdly unstable in my experience), Manjaro (incompetent dev team, known for shipping unsupported packages and having breakages more often than Arch the parent distro), and Debian as a desktop user (browsers are outdated, a lot of packages in the main repos are too outdated to be usable, lots of security issues from using outdated packages, only really important packages get security updates like the kernel. I use debian myself for some things and it's fine but you should be aware of the downsides). RedHat I don't even consider an option anymore since they pretty much became a proprietary distro - you are only provided source code if you pay for it and it's against their 'rules' to redistribute source code, even if you are legally allowed to do so because of the GPL. Aside from this, running with small hobbyist distros is not very advisable, first because it likely won't cater to what YOU want out of a computer, and second because that's more people that you're trusting with the privacy, security and stability of your OS. If you use Arch, you trust the Arch guys. If you use Arco, you trust the Arch guys and you trust Eric Dubois. Nothing against him btw, I like Arco, but adding more trusted parties is less than ideal from a security pov. I personally like Arch the best because it's easy to get packages there, has a big community and lots of docs, and you get updated packages without being required to compile them yourself. Distros like Fedora and Mint seem to be fine for the most part, but I don't use them myself because software availability seems worse than on Arch, and IMO their upsides over Arch aren't very many. I used openbsd for a bit and it's perfectly fine, but software availability is much worse than what you would get from any linux distro. You also don't get Wayland (which is a modern display server protocol), and getting VMs running on it seems not great although i didn't try.

>>70539 You can also get vim bindings in Emacs if you like vim but want a GUI and the superior extensibility that you get from Emacs. >>70781 I wouldn't be surprised if Arch based distros were the most popular right now, even SteamOS bases off of it. It's widely regarded as the better desktop experience, and I've only ever had to (very fixable) breakages after using it for two years. It's fine.

>>70790 I use Arch btw

>>70538 Linux is trash. Just don't install it. The code is filled with poor quality soykaf and feature creep. The kernel is bloated and full of bugs. The whole GNU/Linux movement have lost focus. It's a headache, but you could try an easier variant of FreeBSD like GhostBSD or NomadBSD.

>>70794 >more memes https://www.ghostbsd.org/node/253

>>70799 >ghostbsd is switching to linux because bsd is like kicking dead whales down the beach >haha just kidding april fools This is the equivalent of a church doing an april fool prank about switching to science because god isn't real.

Idk been using windows since 6 had no problems switching to linux at 20. Spent maybe a year fighting manuals and that was all it took to start feeling comfortable.

id say dont start with arco. its a cool distro but if something goes wrong itll be harder to tell cuz you arent used to linux. start off with mint for 1 month. see how much software you can get running smoothly on it. see how many new tools you enjoy using. and then if you want to, from there you can switch.

I hope this is archived so we can access these great tips shared here again.

Why not try using Linux like Windows? I use Debian + XFCE , and I use it just like Windows. No vim , no thing , use simple programs and enjoy Linux before getting into the hell storm of linux mastery.

>>70784 Well, if you want it to just work and have it look like windows then install kubuntu LTS (its ubuntu but with the kde desktop that resembles windows, you can also theme kde to make it look even more like windows) As for the snaps and "telemetry" you can simply remove all of it from the system >>70794 >The code is filled with poor quality soykaf and feature creep. The kernel is bloated and full of bugs. Then why is it used on android phones, on all of the top 500 supercomputers and on pretty much every server? Also BSD has pretty much no hardware support

I want to switch to Linux and I've tried a bunch of distros but none fit. I don't really like regular Debian, Arch doesn't work on my hardware and Fedora just doesn't work for me. It's buggy, keeps crashing, is slow as fuarrrk or just craps out for no reason. It's driving me insane. Gentoo feels great but isn't good for daily use or beginners and its way too slow. I'm overwhelmed. It's driving me insane.

>>72973 use it in a vm first, if you feel ready to switch, switch, otherwise just don't. Pick a modified light windows iso and go at it like a dog on peanut butter. You don't have to use linux if you don't have a need (or preference) to use linux.

>>72976 I keep testing out different distros in VMs. I decided on Fedora but holy fuarrrk it just doesn't work when I put it on hardware.

>>72977 if you don't want to debug why, you shouldn't use linux, i don't think it's a plug and play experience. I use it exclusively (with gpu passthrough for games on windows) and it works, but that's only because i like debugging and want a system tailored for my experience. If you don't want that kind of headache, i really don't see you having a good time on linux.

>>72981 I want to move to Linux to escape the corporate prison that is Windows. I'm not going to jump straight into Arch or whatever because I don't have the skill or care about rolling release. I just want a basic stable distro I can play around with but that's just complex enough I'll be able to learn how to use it. I shouldn't be having issues with Fedora which is supposed to be polished corporate soykaf anyway. It should work out of the box. I shouldn't have to debug it when it comes to basic functioning. I can't be expected to debug a piece of software I don't understand because the damn thing won't boot or it bricks my machines. I loved going through the handbook and installing Gentoo and Arch but those are not good daily drivers for a beginner. I just want something that works.

>>72983 You sure have a lot of opinions about how things are supposed to be for someone who can't debug their way out of basic errors. >I just want something that works. Windows. Mac. Otherwise, get learning. This is the only key out of this imaginary prison of yours, if you don't want it, stay there, nobody but you will care.

>>72973 Install Trisqel GNU/Linux-libre. The packages are extremely outdated as it's based off Ubuntu, which is based on Debian (which is out of date from the get go), but it's fast and stable, even on old thinkpads.

>>72973 Try Void Linux in VirtualBox VM and see if you like it. Or just use Linux Mint or Xubuntu (aka the 2 standard beginner Linux distros).

>>72983 Have you considered Slackware? It's a pretty complete out of the box distro, and learning with it really made me pay attention to whats important.

>>72994 linux libre is a fuarrrking joke, no one should be installing it.

>>74380 linux libre is the ultimate state of all software the day comes when corpos die just like they always died in the past and then we will finally achieve our happy existence with entirely free software and hardware everyone should be installing linux libre and buy supported hardware to do their little punch in this long and bloody battle against evil

>>74389 Link me some affordable options and I will.

>>74405 no one has told you the battle is going to be easy if you want victory you must be ready to make a sacrifice or even die all you want is to get the world turn around you for $10 a month that's just not gonna happen every war takes it's toll and this one is very tough because they've got all and every advantage and we literally have to work our way up an escarpment there is just no way you're gonna have affordable options if you are too weak to leave everything behind for the grand godly strife of ours please don't brag about asking for affordable options

>>70781 > No idea what Arco is. You should've stuck with Ubuntu. Take the most common choice usually; it would logically have more work done on it thus less obtuse/obscure and importantly more troubleshooting. From the sound of the thread this is the correct answer. This is the most popular distro and will have the most resources for a noob. Large repository of maintained packages, designed to be easy to use. >>73085 > Have you considered Slackware? It's a pretty complete out of the box distro, and learning with it really made me pay attention to whats important. This is the 2nd most correct option. Slackware is mature and forces you to Unix like it’s 1991. Not everything you learn will be applicable to modern unixes but you will be forced to understand how most things work. After that you can take some class or read some book that walks you through the original unix kernel or Minix or some other beast from a simpler time and you can pretty much say you know Unix. After all of that you will be at work and still have problems with linux and errors you don’t understand. As a final note: You will never understand modern Linux it’s just too big. The irony is that most of that crap is there to lower the learning curve it does but it draws out that curve infinitely whereas just learning Unix used to be something people could tackle and when they did managing the system and fixing problems was pretty easy.

I don't get all this hubbub about Linux. I mean, how hard can it be? If you get overwhelmed turn off the computer and do something else for a while to relax and come back to it later. Find some good books that will teach you.

>>74418 I mean yeah but sometimes you just gotta plow through that soykaf. Though I do think OP should just use Ubuntu as his daily driver for awhile and use search and chatgpt to help him figure out how to change things around.