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> Perhaps I should have chosen another flavor? That'll ignite a holy war. The trick with linux isn't to learn the flavour, it's to learn linux - once you get

> Perhaps I should have chosen another flavor? That'll ignite a holy war. The trick with linux isn't to learn the flavour, it's to learn linux - once you get an overview of how all the bits work then switching distro is (much) more straightforward. Ubuntu is an excellent first choice because it's one of the major distro's so you'll be able to google stuff more easily. My personal recommendation would be Fedora (and if you want a familiar windows 10 at least in approach GUI) Cinnamon which is excellent.

xattt 3y ago
Any comment on Arch one you get going? I find the documentation quite thorough for the niggly bits, and have used it to troubleshoot Ubuntu (taking into account differences between the distros).
- II2II 3y ago
  I am an Arch enthusiast since I like building my system up and learning how things are put together, but it is not a terribly good platform for learning how to use or manage a Linux system. One of the issues is that you end up with a system is tailored to your own needs. While that sounds great, you have to make an effort to generalize those skills since no one else will have a setup quite like yours.
vorticalbox 3y ago
I have been eyeing up Fedora Onyx for the immutable root
- stingraycharles 3y ago
  You mean Fedora Silverblue? Haven’t heard of Onyx. Edit: ok so I learned about Onyx, which appears to be doing roughly the same thing?
  - palebluedot 3y ago
    There are different spins of Fedora that are immutable and based on rpm-ostree and flatpaks, the variation being the desktop manager environment: * Silverblue: GNOME * Onyx: Budgie * Kinoite: KDE Plasma * Sericea: Sway
    - bryanlarsen 3y ago
      And don't forget the community spins based off ublue, like Bazzite!
- KAMSPioneer 3y ago
  Just installed Onyx yesterday on my work machine! So far so good, some niggles as always (it's my first time using Budgie), but overall fairly usable and easy.
- totallywrong 3y ago
  I've been using an immutable Fedora for quite a while now and it's amazing. I use toolbox and run everything in containers, including GUI apps, so not even using Flatpak which I'm not a big fan of. I think I have like 3 or 4 packages installed on top of the base image. The peace of mind while upgrading can't be overstated. Highly recommended.
  - vorticalbox 3y ago
    I run mongodb for work and that requires openssl1. On Ubuntu I just copy the libs over to /usr/lib But that wouldn't be an option on an immutable system. I will look into toolbox. Edit: looks like tool box is exactly what I'm after!
oldnetguy 3y ago
> That'll ignite a holy war. And that has been the major problem with Linux for years.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
  The duplication of work is staggering. The best people at Mint are working on the same problems as those at Fedora and PopOS and Cube and Suse … infinite loop.
chx 3y ago
Where do I learn modern desktop Linux? I am using it on servers since 1993 and used for desktop 2004-2017 (and was very unhappy with it) so my desktop knowledge is severely outdated.
- blkhawk 3y ago
  I would be really interested what you were unhappy with? the only major thing that truely changed after 2017 was that wine became almost universally compatible. It was freakish how little issues i had in 2019 when i switched completely.
  - antod 3y ago
    2017 was in the early phase of pretty disruptive era with Linux - eg systemd, audio, wayland, app sandboxes etc etc. I get the feeling things are settling now, and stabilising / consolidating into a better place overall with less churn. But for a while things weren't as stable as they typically were before that.
    - blkhawk 3y ago
      I tried wayland maybe a little over a year ago and the copy and paste behavior was bad enough to switch back. I recently switched to get freesync to work on multimonitor and the issue is now manageable. app sandboxes I fell less positive about - I dislike them since I think they are only fixing stuff that is already unaceptable to happen. As for audio - yes while pulseaudio was working i remember some issues with that (mostly related to s/pdiv). This also has lessened with pipewire.
  - chx 3y ago
    Some experiences Ubuntu distupgrade breaks my machine so badly I need to spend days putting it together again Switched to Arch Upgrade. Bluetooth breaks. MFC device breaks. One of the two almost always. Compared to this the only thing I dislike with Windows upgrades is how it can wake up the machine even from S0 state (wtf!) to upgrade and reboot. But aside from that, it's a complete nonevent when it upgrades. It's been near six years and I never had an issue. I had a client using an F5 VPN requiring MFA and there was no MFA support except on Windows. I got it working with an old Firefox running as root (because that supported old style extensions and I managed to find an old extension that worked). The only question regarding this setup was from the head of IT at this company asking but not receiving any responses on how to do this. Weird enterprise wifi always a headache. I just got a GPD G1. Here's my experience getting it to work: 1. Plug in power. 2. Plug in the Thunderbolt cable 3. Install AMD Adrenaline driver only (only step that requires a tiny bit of expertise -- don't install all the stuff) 4. Reboot 5. It works. 6. If I unplug it, machine goes back to the nVidia GPU inside the laptop. No fuss. Tell me true, is this going to work on Linux ? I seriously doubt.
underseacables 3y ago
Thank you, The documentation is really important for me I guess. I feel more comfortable with documentation carefully laid everything out; screenshots are gold. Is there a book that you would recommend that would help a novice like myself learn Linux better?
- aarond0623 3y ago
  IMO, the best way to get comfortable with Linux is to get comfortable with the command line, because although every distribution is going to have different UI and built-in apps, the command line is going to stay pretty consistent. Also, a lot of troubleshooting you Google is going to involve interacting with the command line, and it's essential to understand what the commands you're executing are actually doing. I'd recommend The Linux Command Line by William Schotts to get started.
  - TrueSlacker0 3y ago
    And that right there is why Linux is so frustrating to start with. It is easier to solve most problems via command line however a normal user should never ever have to touch a command line. Everything for a common person should be easily accessible via a gui.
    - veqq 3y ago
      > Everything for a common person should be easily accessible via a gui. They are. Just there are many different GUIs. Each distro by definition has different ones and you can easily change them yourself etc. There are dozens of sound GUIs, hell, I've tried 4 redshift GUIs before settling on QRedshift. It's so easy to write software for Linux that you have countless opportunities. That's why the command line is easier - it always works(ish).
  - blowfish721 3y ago
    Was trying to configure a network bridge for a vm just the other day from cli. The guide (for Ubuntu which I was also using) was using nmcli (Network Manager), tried it and command not found, back to searching and was nudged to systemd networking by stackoverflow which didnt work either. Turns out that my system was using Netplan. Three different systems to handle networking, really? Ok, chatgpt convert this nmcli command to netplan, sure here you go just put this in your netplan config file and apply config. Ends up with a botched network config on a headless system.

xattt 3y ago

Any comment on Arch one you get going? I find the documentation quite thorough for the niggly bits, and have used it to troubleshoot Ubuntu (taking into account differences between the distros).

II2II 3y ago
I am an Arch enthusiast since I like building my system up and learning how things are put together, but it is not a terribly good platform for learning how to use or manage a Linux system. One of the issues is that you end up with a system is tailored to your own needs. While that sounds great, you have to make an effort to generalize those skills since no one else will have a setup quite like yours.

vorticalbox 3y ago

I have been eyeing up Fedora Onyx for the immutable root

stingraycharles 3y ago
You mean Fedora Silverblue? Haven’t heard of Onyx. Edit: ok so I learned about Onyx, which appears to be doing roughly the same thing?
- palebluedot 3y ago
  There are different spins of Fedora that are immutable and based on rpm-ostree and flatpaks, the variation being the desktop manager environment: * Silverblue: GNOME * Onyx: Budgie * Kinoite: KDE Plasma * Sericea: Sway
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    And don't forget the community spins based off ublue, like Bazzite!
KAMSPioneer 3y ago
Just installed Onyx yesterday on my work machine! So far so good, some niggles as always (it's my first time using Budgie), but overall fairly usable and easy.
totallywrong 3y ago
I've been using an immutable Fedora for quite a while now and it's amazing. I use toolbox and run everything in containers, including GUI apps, so not even using Flatpak which I'm not a big fan of. I think I have like 3 or 4 packages installed on top of the base image. The peace of mind while upgrading can't be overstated. Highly recommended.
- vorticalbox 3y ago
  I run mongodb for work and that requires openssl1. On Ubuntu I just copy the libs over to /usr/lib But that wouldn't be an option on an immutable system. I will look into toolbox. Edit: looks like tool box is exactly what I'm after!

oldnetguy 3y ago

> That'll ignite a holy war. And that has been the major problem with Linux for years.

SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
The duplication of work is staggering. The best people at Mint are working on the same problems as those at Fedora and PopOS and Cube and Suse … infinite loop.

chx 3y ago

Where do I learn modern desktop Linux? I am using it on servers since 1993 and used for desktop 2004-2017 (and was very unhappy with it) so my desktop knowledge is severely outdated.

blkhawk 3y ago
I would be really interested what you were unhappy with? the only major thing that truely changed after 2017 was that wine became almost universally compatible. It was freakish how little issues i had in 2019 when i switched completely.
- antod 3y ago
  2017 was in the early phase of pretty disruptive era with Linux - eg systemd, audio, wayland, app sandboxes etc etc. I get the feeling things are settling now, and stabilising / consolidating into a better place overall with less churn. But for a while things weren't as stable as they typically were before that.
  - blkhawk 3y ago
    I tried wayland maybe a little over a year ago and the copy and paste behavior was bad enough to switch back. I recently switched to get freesync to work on multimonitor and the issue is now manageable. app sandboxes I fell less positive about - I dislike them since I think they are only fixing stuff that is already unaceptable to happen. As for audio - yes while pulseaudio was working i remember some issues with that (mostly related to s/pdiv). This also has lessened with pipewire.
- chx 3y ago
  Some experiences Ubuntu distupgrade breaks my machine so badly I need to spend days putting it together again Switched to Arch Upgrade. Bluetooth breaks. MFC device breaks. One of the two almost always. Compared to this the only thing I dislike with Windows upgrades is how it can wake up the machine even from S0 state (wtf!) to upgrade and reboot. But aside from that, it's a complete nonevent when it upgrades. It's been near six years and I never had an issue. I had a client using an F5 VPN requiring MFA and there was no MFA support except on Windows. I got it working with an old Firefox running as root (because that supported old style extensions and I managed to find an old extension that worked). The only question regarding this setup was from the head of IT at this company asking but not receiving any responses on how to do this. Weird enterprise wifi always a headache. I just got a GPD G1. Here's my experience getting it to work: 1. Plug in power. 2. Plug in the Thunderbolt cable 3. Install AMD Adrenaline driver only (only step that requires a tiny bit of expertise -- don't install all the stuff) 4. Reboot 5. It works. 6. If I unplug it, machine goes back to the nVidia GPU inside the laptop. No fuss. Tell me true, is this going to work on Linux ? I seriously doubt.

underseacables 3y ago

Thank you, The documentation is really important for me I guess. I feel more comfortable with documentation carefully laid everything out; screenshots are gold. Is there a book that you would recommend that would help a novice like myself learn Linux better?

aarond0623 3y ago
IMO, the best way to get comfortable with Linux is to get comfortable with the command line, because although every distribution is going to have different UI and built-in apps, the command line is going to stay pretty consistent. Also, a lot of troubleshooting you Google is going to involve interacting with the command line, and it's essential to understand what the commands you're executing are actually doing. I'd recommend The Linux Command Line by William Schotts to get started.
- TrueSlacker0 3y ago
  And that right there is why Linux is so frustrating to start with. It is easier to solve most problems via command line however a normal user should never ever have to touch a command line. Everything for a common person should be easily accessible via a gui.
  - veqq 3y ago
    > Everything for a common person should be easily accessible via a gui. They are. Just there are many different GUIs. Each distro by definition has different ones and you can easily change them yourself etc. There are dozens of sound GUIs, hell, I've tried 4 redshift GUIs before settling on QRedshift. It's so easy to write software for Linux that you have countless opportunities. That's why the command line is easier - it always works(ish).
- blowfish721 3y ago
  Was trying to configure a network bridge for a vm just the other day from cli. The guide (for Ubuntu which I was also using) was using nmcli (Network Manager), tried it and command not found, back to searching and was nudged to systemd networking by stackoverflow which didnt work either. Turns out that my system was using Netplan. Three different systems to handle networking, really? Ok, chatgpt convert this nmcli command to netplan, sure here you go just put this in your netplan config file and apply config. Ends up with a botched network config on a headless system.