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New to Linux (lemmy.world)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/linux@lemmy.world
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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.

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[–] 1 point 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

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.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months 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
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