Diving into Linux

[Derekd]

Hello All!

As the world of windows continues to crumble with every update, I hit a breaking point last week and decided to try (for like the 4th time) Linux.  Quick background: I was a mac user in my younger years, and now use windows primarily.  I have tried Ubuntu in the past, and it feels very Mac OS (or at least it did at the time). I tried it recently, and it feels like it has regressed from consumer friendly to more business oriented.  I also tried Pop OS in the past, but found that it would cause my laptop fans to ramp to full speed at all times because... i dunno.  Jump forward to now, I tried Bazzite because I have read its the most "gamer friendly".  Overall it was fine... I the UIs look.  And then because I read it constantly online, my latest install to try is Linux Mint.  I can honestly say, it has been the most "user friendly" but... I don't love the look of it.  It looks like it has sort of a Windows 7 vibe going on.  

Anyways... all that being said.  Does anyone have any good resources or recommendations on how to learn how to do more.  No offense to the Linux community, but asking a questions typically results in answers that only other Linux people would understand.  Explain it to me like i'm 5.  

[U2ername]

What system spec do you have?

 

I would only recommend cutting edge or close to if you are on high-end hardware, beginner-friendly for high-end hardware: Nobara.

 

Reasons for Nobara.

 

It is an already gaming friendly Linux distribution with a big player; Glorious Eggroll, this guy is the creator of this Fedora based distribution who tirelessly updates his own custom version of Protron, helping us all move into greatness, it is at the point now where it is only if a game company has not allowed an anti-cheat to work on Linux that you will have any trouble, you will hit a snag in the road I am sure if you were testing the absolutely insane vast catalogue of Pc games available, but good luck doing that.

 

 

Other suggestion for high-end is CachyOS.

 

Reasons for CachyOS.

 

GUI / Terminal flexibility.

 

A great way to make a start on learning the terminal and also having the power of cutting edge features newly created for the Linux ecosystem, the downside is that if you do not research and are not careful, you can easily nuke your Linux install.

 

Due to its Arch based nature, you can expect cutting edge performance and the latest kernel patches, it will likely be ahead of Nobara in terms of bleeding edge hardware support, for example RTX 5090 / RX 9070 XT.

 

The Arch based nature means you have a VAST documentation to learn from: The Arch Wiki.

You also have Arch standard package management along with the forked CachyOS variant also.

 

On CachyOS you will have to set up Lutris, Steam, GEproton, Wine, Mangohud yourself.

 

 

 

 

For anything else, Linux Mint is great, not bleeding edge and want a friendly system that is likely to never be nuked, here you go!

 

On Linux Mint you will have to set up Lutris, Steam, GEproton, Wine, Mangohud yourself.

 

 

 

[AAVVIronAlex]

39 minutes ago, Derekd said:

Hello All!

As the world of windows continues to crumble with every update, I hit a breaking point last week and decided to try (for like the 4th time) Linux.  Quick background: I was a mac user in my younger years, and now use windows primarily.  I have tried Ubuntu in the past, and it feels very Mac OS (or at least it did at the time). I tried it recently, and it feels like it has regressed from consumer friendly to more business oriented.  I also tried Pop OS in the past, but found that it would cause my laptop fans to ramp to full speed at all times because... i dunno.  Jump forward to now, I tried Bazzite because I have read its the most "gamer friendly".  Overall it was fine... I the UIs look.  And then because I read it constantly online, my latest install to try is Linux Mint.  I can honestly say, it has been the most "user friendly" but... I don't love the look of it.  It looks like it has sort of a Windows 7 vibe going on.  

Anyways... all that being said.  Does anyone have any good resources or recommendations on how to learn how to do more.  No offense to the Linux community, but asking a questions typically results in answers that only other Linux people would understand.  Explain it to me like i'm 5.  

Install Kubuntu, it is basically Ubuntu with a Windows look. So good documentation and easy migration.

Here is KDE:

[Skipple]

32 minutes ago, U2ername said:

I would only recommend cutting edge or close to if you are on high-end hardware, beginner-friendly for high-end hardware: Nobara.

32 minutes ago, U2ername said:

Other suggestion for high-end is CachyOS.

I'm sorry, but suggesting two fairly esoteric distros to a Linux novice is actually crazy. 

 

OP, I would highly suggest sticking to more popular options, (ie. Ubuntu, Mint, Kubuntu, Fedora, etc.) as your resources for troubleshooting and support channels will be far more extensive.

[U2ername]

Just now, Skipple said:

I'm sorry, but suggesting two fairly esoteric distros to a Linux novice is actually crazy. 

 

OP, I would highly suggest sticking to more popular options, (ie. Ubuntu, Mint, Kubuntu, Fedora, etc.) as your resources for troubleshooting and support channels will be far more extensive.

Who said I am not a novice?

 

If I can do it, I am sure a few out there can too.

 

 

[Skipple]

1 minute ago, U2ername said:

Who said I am not a novice?

If you're a novice, then, with due respect, you shouldn't be giving advice regarding a topic you have limited experience with. 

[U2ername]

1 minute ago, Skipple said:

If you're a novice, then, with due respect, you shouldn't be giving advice regarding a topic you have limited experience with. 

Well the OP did say they are done with the likes of you, I did not make the OP's rules up.

 

Rather than explain anything, you dig at someone.

[Skipple]

1 hour ago, Derekd said:

Does anyone have any good resources or recommendations on how to learn how to do more.

The Linux Journey is a good resource to learn simple CLI commands, process control, file system, etc.

If you are interesting in the inner machinations of Linux, I highly recommend How Linux Works by Brian Ward. 

I haven't done this, but I have seen people say good things about the /r/LinuxUpSkillChallenge. It walks you through standing up a linux server, SSHing into it then performing various tasks. It will teach you a TON.

1 hour ago, Derekd said:

it feels very Mac OS ... I the UIs look.... I don't love the look of it

You seem to be caught up on the UI look and feel of distros, which is fair, but it should be noted that the GUI Desktop Environment is just surface level and can be changed completely, regardless of the distro you choose. There's an entire community dedicating to changing or 'ricing' their Linux DE (Desktop Environments) and WM (Window Managers)  https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/

[jaslion]

1 hour ago, Derekd said:

but... I don't love the look of it.  It looks like it has sort of a Windows 7 vibe going on.  

Thing is mint, ubuntu,... At the core are very very very similar and are jsut running differenr desktop enviroments which you can freely change around. Another popular one is kde which is most associated with kubuntu. In the end you just gotta find the interface you like and go from there. Any specific look you are going for? Ubuntu based distros are recommended due to being amongst the best supported especially for gaming.

[jaslion]

2 minutes ago, Skipple said:

There's an entire community dedicating to changing or 'ricing' their Linux DE (Desktop Environments) and WM (

Ayyyy das me. I wantes kde plasma's 4.0 look back and forced it on my ubuntu install. Works fine and once I understood what I was doing I was able to swap between versions in minutes to finetune what I wanted. Even survived the 22 to 24 ubuntu upgrade just fine!

[Thomas53]

Kubuntu is simply Ubuntu with the KDE desktop as the default.  The KDE desktop is available by choice on many distros or, if you're a more advanced user, can be later installed into any Linux distribution.

[Ha-Satan]

One thing to keep in mind is that Linux distros are divided into "families," as many distros are actually just derivatives of other distros with modifications. Generally, you can switch between distros in the same family and 99% of things will work identically, so at least within families, a lot of the differences are more cosmetic than anything.

 

So for example, if you use a typical Debian-based distro like Ubuntu, you'll probably be able to use basically any other Debian-based distro with a minimal learning curve as all the basic commands and workflows will be essentially the same, other than different desktop environments.

 

TL;DR don't sweat too much about your distro choice

[gentlemanspot]

i like Mint and PopOS,  

 

I prefer XFCE and cinnamon, and I seem to spend time making it look like Windows 95/98 

 

For a light/mid-weight build, MX Linux is neat too! 

 

 

for look and feel just trawl Pling

https://www.pling.com

 

for learning Learn Linux TV is neat 

https://www.learnlinux.tv

[Derekd]

15 hours ago, Ha-Satan said:

One thing to keep in mind is that Linux distros are divided into "families," as many distros are actually just derivatives of other distros with modifications. Generally, you can switch between distros in the same family and 99% of things will work identically, so at least within families, a lot of the differences are more cosmetic than anything.

 

So for example, if you use a typical Debian-based distro like Ubuntu, you'll probably be able to use basically any other Debian-based distro with a minimal learning curve as all the basic commands and workflows will be essentially the same, other than different desktop environments.

 

TL;DR don't sweat too much about your distro choice

So... can you please explain.  What do you mean by distro families.  I get the impression that linux is linux is linux.... and they all just have different UI's (desktop environments)... at least that's what my take away form this thread is so far.  What are the different "families" and how do they differ?  Would it be sort of like.... windows 7 vs windows xp vs windows 11?

[Ha-Satan]

32 minutes ago, Derekd said:

So... can you please explain.  What do you mean by distro families.  I get the impression that linux is linux is linux.... and they all just have different UI's (desktop environments)... at least that's what my take away form this thread is so far.

 

No, that's not quite the case. How Linux works, organizationally, is that the Linux foundation provides the system kernel, which is the core part of the OS that manages system resources and hardware. But the kernel does not provide many other important functions, which are left up to the developers of the distribution. This goes well beyond differences in UIs.

 

For example, one important system function that's not dictated by the kernel is the "init system," which is the first process that starts up when the OS boots and this process initializes and starts up all the other necessary processes. So in other words, this is an important part of system functionality that is far more fundamental than the UI. And there are different init systems that different distributions use. Most popular, modern distributions use something called systemd for their init system, but there are also a lot of people who have (very valid) complaints about systemd and so there are distros that use other init systems like sysvinit.

 

Now just to be clear, you don't need to have some kind of deep understanding of the init system to use Linux (I definitely don't). In fact you don't really need to know about the init system at all in order to use Linux. I'm just bringing this up as an example of how Linux distributions have differences that run much deeper than the UI.

 

Linux distro "families" exist because many distros will use the basic functionality and programs from a pre-existing distro as a starting point, which makes them similar to use. For example, one of the most important programs on any Linux distro is the package manager, which is the command-line tool that you can use to install other programs from the distribution's repository. Typically, programs in the same family will share the same package manager. So for example, on basically any Debian/Ubuntu-based distribution (like Mint, Pop!OS, or Zorin), I can use the "apt" package manger to install programs, i.e. 'sudo apt install [name of program]'.

 

But on the other hand, distros in the Arch family, like Manjaro or EndeavourOS will typically use the "pacman" package manager, not "apt", so it would be 'pacman -S [name of program]'.

 

This is what I mean about how moving between different distros in the same family will typically work basically the same (other than possibly the UI), but moving to a distro in a different family will typically have a bit more of a learning curve (though not a huge learning curve, to be clear).

 

Here's a "periodic table" of Linux distros and the family they fall under (see the legend at the top):

 

https://distrowatch.com/images/other/periodic-table-of-distro.png

 

As you can see, the Debian/Ubuntu family is probably the most popular these days.

 

I hope this is helpful. I am reasonably knowledgeable about this stuff but if anybody who's more of an expert than me sees a problem with my explanation, please correct me lol.

[ewitte]

I've been using Linux for like 30 years.  I haven't found desktop to be a suitable replacement for windows but it's very good for server tasks.  I've recently started testing Bazzite it seems Wayland is starting to progress this.

[Skipple]

57 minutes ago, Ha-Satan said:

How Linux works, organizationally, is that the Linux foundation provides the system kernel, which is the core part of the OS that manages system resources and hardware. But the kernel does not provide many other important functions, which are left up to the developers of the distribution.

Actually relevant copypasta....

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs.....

[Ha-Satan]

3 minutes ago, Skipple said:

Actually relevant copypasta....

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs.....

[Derekd]

18 minutes ago, Skipple said:

Actually relevant copypasta....

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs.....

This is what I meant originally by "talking to linux people..."  LOL!  What is GNU?  Explain it like im 5 please.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

10 minutes ago, Derekd said:

This is what I meant originally by "talking to linux people..."  LOL!  What is GNU?  Explain it like im 5 please.

"GNU" is an acronym for "GNU Not Unix". The FOSS (Free Open Source Software) crowd loves to make stupid recursive acronyms like that. Linux is the kernel, while GNU is other stuff, and then GNU+Linux makes the whole operating system... In fact, I may be wrong or inaccurate about that, which just goes to point that it really doesn't matter at all.

 

The takeaway is that what people call "Linux" are actually multiple, closely related operating systems, with a general "Unix-derivative" feeling (hence  why you finfdsome familiarity with MacOS, and the emphasis in denying the  link in "GNU"). When talking about PCs, people refer to different bundles of software (from the OS kernel to the desktop environment, to included apps, to pure looks) as "distros". Sometimes the difference between 2 distros is literally how they look (which you can change anyway), sometimes they differ in important components which will make you do things somewhat differently in one vs. the other. In the end, that means that literal command lines or software names will change, but the essence of what you do is mostly the same.

 

20 hours ago, Derekd said:

Anyways... all that being said.  Does anyone have any good resources or recommendations on how to learn how to do more.  No offense to the Linux community, but asking a questions typically results in answers that only other Linux people would understand.  Explain it to me like i'm 5.  

This thread is a good example  You said you already installed some distro and want to do more... and got 10 distro recommendations  My advice would be to just get on with using your computer and google things as you need them... trying to always err on the side of the most normie results. Lately, I'm finding that asking LLMs chatbots (Copilot, Claude, etc) is a great way to avoid the usual obnoxiousness of dedicated forums (not just for Linux, but for everything), you just have to be careful with the potential inaccuracies of their first answers.

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

Can we have some of the "... is the year of the Linux desktop" people in here, please?

[Ha-Satan]

57 minutes ago, Derekd said:

This is what I meant originally by "talking to linux people..."  LOL!  What is GNU?  Explain it like im 5 please.

So, back in the 70s, Unix became one of the dominant operating systems for scientific and business computing. The original licensing of Unix was...complicated, so at first, it got shared relatively freely among universities and other researchers, with lots of variants (like BSD) being created. It wasn't really "free software" but it wasn't totally locked down either. In other words, people could generally share and modify the Unix software the way they wanted (to a point, at least), which was a big part of what made it so popular.

 

However, in the early 80s, AT&T (who actually controlled the Unix license) started locking Unix down and switched to selling it as closed-source commercial software, which was a problem for a lot of the people who had been working with the relatively free versions of Unix that had been around in the 70s.

 

Because of this, Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation started working on a "Unix-like" operating system called GNU which is a stupid backronym for "GNU's Not Unix!" as a poster mentioned above. This was supposed to function similar to Unix, but it would be free rather than closed-source.

 

The GNU project created a bunch of software utilities called the "GNU tools," but at least initially, they didn't have an operating system kernel to go along with it.

 

A few years later, in the early 90s, Linus Torvalds wrote his own operating system kernel  - the Linux kernel - which was compatible with the GNU utilities. 

 

Thus, the core of most Linux distributions is actually the combination of the Linux kernel with the GNU utilities.

 

I hope this makes sense lol.

 

I strongly recommend watching the following videos from Asianometry if you want to know more about this stuff:

 

The Evolution of the Operating System

 

The Rise of Unix, The Seeds of its Fall

 

A Chronicle of the Unix Wars

 

Also this wikipedia article:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU/Linux_naming_controversy

 

----------------------------------------

 

I get that this seems like a lot of info, but please keep in mind that you don't actually need to know any of this in order to just use Linux. I bring it up because I think it's super interesting.

 

Also, keep in mind that when I say "free" throughout this post, I mean free as in "free software", not necessarily free as in "doesn't cost any money."

 

 

 

[brukar]

If you like Mint and your biggest gripe is how it looks, you could look into changing the desktop environment (default Cinnamon) to something you like more. It is possible to install GNOME on Mint. It is probably also possible to make Cinnamon look more like what you want it to, but that's probably a more complex process.

 

My recommendation for learning to use linux is to use linux. When you encounter something you don't know how to do, use your favorite search engine to find solutions. This is easier with larger distros, so I'd definitely recommend going with one that has a lot of users.

[Ha-Satan]

1 hour ago, brukar said:

It is possible to install GNOME on Mint.

TBH at that point you might as well just install Ubuntu, since the main meaningful difference between Mint and Ubuntu is the use of snaps, which a beginner probably wouldn't care about anyway.