Hello I’m Doctor_Rex I’m the OP of this post:

My Windows 10 install broke, but I’m hesitant to switch to Linux.

I’d like to start by thanking everybody who responded to my questions. Your answers have helped a lot when it came to my worries on switching to Linux.

I’ve taken in a lot of your recommendations: Fedora, Fedora Kinoite, Nobara, Bazzite Linux, VanillaOS,

I’ve decided on Fedora Kinoite, as it has everything I want from a distro.

It was very kind of you all to answer my questions but after making that post and reading your answers new questions propped up.

These questions are a little more opinionated than the last ones, and a little better thought out, but please take some time to answer them.

Questions:

  • Is Wayland worth using? Especially when you consider all the issues that may come from using an NVIDIA card.

Are there any real noticeable advantages/improvements to using Wayland over Xorg.

  • Does bloat actually matter or is it just a meme?

Does bloat actually have a noticeable negative impact on your system or are people just over reacting/joking.

  • What are some habits I should practice in order to keep my system organized and manageable?

Any habits or standards that I should abide by in order to save myself headaches in the future?

  • Any other resources besides the Arch Wiki that I should be aware of?

Self explanatory.

  • What do you wish you knew when you first started using Linux that would have saved you a headache in the future?

I’m not referring to some skill but instead something pertaining to Linux itself. Feel free to skip this question.

I’ll be going to sleep soon, so apologies if I don’t reply but please take a moment answer any questions you think you can.

Thank You!

Edit: AUR = Arch Wiki. Fixed a typo

  • rtxn@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    8 months ago

    Is Wayland worth using?

    For a first dive into the Linux ecosystem, I recommend Xorg. I use Wayland myself (Hyprland), and that’s why I know that it’s simply not ready for general adoption. There are many features that are missing, won’t be implemented, or are done much differently compared to X. Some say Xorg is old and bloated - I say it’s a mature technology.

    There are also some applications that need root privileges to work (Veyon Configurator is one that I struggled a lot with) and you have to do some weird pkexec hackery to launch them.

    Wayland’s development has more drama and bickering than an average sitcom - I recommend Brodie Robertson’s channel if you’re interested.

    advantages/improvements to using Wayland

    Wayland is better for gaming. It has a noticeably lower latency because the entire Wayland stack is implemented in a single program (what they call the compositor) as opposed to several in the X11 stack (X server, compositor, window manager) that need to communicate with each other. Unfortunately Steam and some other applications often produce graphical artifacts on Wayland+Nvidia.

    Does bloat actually matter

    Compared to Windows, it is insignificant. My work laptop is a Macbook Air from 2015 running Linux Mint on just 4G RAM without issues.

    Any other resources besides the Arch Wiki that I should be aware of?

    Install the tldr program. It’s a bit like man but lists practical examples of a command instead of a full documentation.

    What are some habits I should practice

    Make use of your home directory. Most user applications will have a config file in several places - usually in ~/.config (user config) and /etc (systemwide config). You should only edit the systemwide config when it makes sense, and always prioritize the user config.

    A common practice is to have your /home directory on a different partition, or a different physical device. If the system breaks or you decide to distrohop, you can unmount/disconnect /home and only wipe the root partition while retaining your user files.

    I also recommend using Timeshift to back up your system. It’s even better if your root partition uses btrfs since it natively supports snapshots.

    What do you wish you knew when you first started using Linux

    I needed to leave the Windows ways behind me. On Windows, I had a hard drive mounted as F: and an external HDD mounted as H:. Moving to Linux (Manjaro at the time) was basically a snap decision since Windows had obliterated the boot partition during an update and then broke itself, and I had no idea how to properly set up the filesystem, so I mounted them to /mnt/f and /mnt/h. It caused me many hours of headache later.

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      8 months ago

      Wayland is better for gaming. It has a noticeably lower latency because the entire Wayland stack is implemented in a single program (what they call the compositor) as opposed to several in the X11 stack (X server, compositor, window manager) that need to communicate with each other.

      Games under X11 use DRI just like with Wayland. Beyond “create a window and handle resize events” they don’t really interact with X11 or your window manager.

      We should expect similar performance and indeed that’s what we find:

      https://www.phoronix.com/review/wayland-nv-amd-2023

      • rtxn@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        8 months ago

        Performance is not the only factor. Running a compositor on X11 introduces a significant input latency, but turning it off caused massive screen tearing on my 60Hz monitor. I experienced it both with Picom (on Qtile and Awesome) and Kwin. I’ve had a far better experience on Sway, Hyprland, and Plasma-wayland.

          • rtxn@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            8 months ago

            Yes. Both screen tearing and input latency can ruin the experience. Please elaborate, I don’t know why you’re asking that question.

            • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              8 months ago

              As somebody who games with X11 I’d love to know what “significant input latency” I’m supposed to be experiencing?

              • rtxn@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                0
                ·
                8 months ago

                YMMV, I’m talking about what I experienced.

                I was mainly playing Cyberpunk and FFXIV at the time. In both games, camera movement was sluggish with a compositor running. It took about a tenth of a second for the game to respond to both keypresses and mouse movements (I’m not counting gamepad inputs since bluetooth has its own latency). On the same computer, on the same 60Hz monitor, with the same GPU, using the same graphics settings, nothing like that happened with the compositor off, nor after switching to Wayland.

    • GigglyBobble@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      8 months ago

      I had no idea how to properly set up the filesystem, so I mounted them to /mnt/f and /mnt/h. It caused me many hours of headache later.

      Can you elaborate? What kind of headaches? How would you set it up now? While I’ve been using Linux quite a while I don’t have multiple hard drives and am always interested in best practices.

      • rtxn@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        8 months ago

        I should correct myself - it wasn’t a bad way to mount my drives, but it was a very Windowsy solution that I came to regret anyways.

        I used that HDD as basically my home directory on Windows. It had all of my projects on it (mainly C# and Blender). When I installed Manjaro on my 240G SSD, I decided to leave my /home directory on the root partition, but it soon filled up. I later wanted to move it to the HDD, which meant that the mount point had changed, which meant that I had to relink all external files in my projects to the new mount point.

        I could’ve just used a symlink that pointed /home to /mnt/f, but /mnt is generally used for manually mounted filesystems, and I wanted to at least have that and /home done properly.

        Right now I have a 2T NVMe SSD, one 200G partition mounted as root, the rest mounted as /data/games (and it really only has Windows games and my Steam library), a separate 1T SSD mounted as /home, and a 3T HDD on /data/hdd that contains my backups, disk images, and large media files, each symlinked to appropriate places.

        • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          8 months ago

          Don’t know if you saw this but you can mount devices multiple times in Linux. And you can mount directories in different locations as well (bind mounts). These can also be helpful in moving around where things are mounted since both the old and new paths will work. But symlinks are probably simpler.

      • ruckblack@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        8 months ago

        Also curious. I’ve had a couple drives on my server machine mounted to /mnt/data and /mnt/data1 for years now (ignore my lazy naming conventions) and I’ve had zero problems.

        • rtxn@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          edit-2
          8 months ago

          Check my other reply - it’s not an incorrect solution, but I came to regret it when I had to change the HDD’s mount point.

    • StoicLime@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      8 months ago

      I don’t know what you mean by Wayland not being ready for general adoption. I’ve been using it on Fedora for a year now with no issues whatsoever.

      Might be a Hyprland issue instead of Wayland, as I remember from the time I tried out Hyprland.

      • rtxn@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        Wayland itself has lots of missing features. There are applications that need absolute window positioning to move sub-windows together with the main window. It’s not an issue on Windows, Mac, or X11, but Wayland doesn’t have a protocol that would allow this (it’s still just a proposal, and there is A LOT of drama surrounding it). Wayland also doesn’t have color management, and support for drawing tablets is rudimentary, which is a deal-breaker for artists and designers. It doesn’t have a standardized way to capture windows either (for streaming or recording), which is why Hyprland’s maintainer made his own xdg-desktop-portal implementation with blackjack and hookers.

        Wayland is great for my use-cases, and I’m willing to work around its issues (mainly related to portals), but there are use-cases where it’s completely unusable. Nvidia support is also sketchy - lots of visual artifacts and flickering windows.

  • greedytacothief@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    8 months ago

    Bloat is just a meme, it comes from a time when sysadmins would need to optimize every aspect of a system to get the most out of it (like not using vi, because it took up too much space/memory). You will never need to get that much performance out of your machine.

    I try not to install programs all willy nilly. If I want to try something new, I’ll fire it up in a vm. I mean this about programs from 3rd party sources, and compiling from source. Anything in the repos is good and will uninstall cleanly too.

    On fedora you get more programs through RPMfusion. It’s sort of official, but also not. And you can also check out the copr repository, this is more like fedora’s aur. Opensuse’s open build service also sometimes has packages that work for red hat systems.

    When I first started I wanted Linux to work just like Windows. It took me a while to shift my perspective to the way Linux people do things. I don’t know how to speed up that process though.

    • Fecundpossum@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      8 months ago

      I think it’s also worth noting that windows bloat and Linux bloat are not even in the same category. Even the heavier Linux distros are so light on system resources that installing a plethora of tools, games and assorted software isn’t going to effect your machine as negatively as it would in windows.

  • 0485@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    This would’ve saved me a headache!

    From what I’ve heard. I’ve you have an Nvidia GPU the easiest thing you can do is to run Ubuntu. They have partnered up with nvidia and they provide you will all drivers you need right out the box.

    It can be a hassle to sort out nvidia cards with certain distros.

    • ikidd@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      8 months ago

      Ubuntu is no magic bullet when it comes to nVidia. A lot of derivative distros like PopOS do it better anyway. And non-ubuntu OSs seem to have less problems anyway, IME. Manjaro and Nobara seem to get a long very well with nVidia cards.

    • BCsven@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      8 months ago

      nVidia hosts its own repo for fedora and openSUSE. So on those you get direct driver from manufacturer. i found it made everything juat work, and the nVidia app has many config options

        • BCsven@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          8 months ago

          It has been helpful for onboarding to linux. Everyone complaining about issues on other distros, and one OpenSUSE leap you just add a repo and check which card category you have. For openSUSE newbies here are some links.

          For Leap zypper addrepo --refresh 'https://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/leap/$releasever' NVIDIA and if for some reason you don’t want to type in a url you can add to the repos this way zypper install openSUSE-repos-NVIDIA

          Tumbleweed is zypper addrepo --refresh https://download.nvidia.com/opensuse/tumbleweed NVIDIA

          And if you wanted to Auto-detect and install driver per your card is zypper install-new-recommends --repo NVIDIA

  • elxeno@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    8 months ago

    I’ve been using linux exclusively for about 5 years, hopped a bit for the first 1-2 years (mint, mx, lite, debian, manjaro, artix), settled on Arch. I think Mint is the best one for ppl coming from windows.

    Is Wayland worth using? Especially when you consider all the issues that may come from using an NVIDIA card.

    IMO no, i have a 1060, tried about 1 year ago and it had lots of issues on KDE, gnome seemed usable but it’s gnome so no, and i use LXQt so if it gets good support or if i like plasma 6 i might try again.

    Does bloat actually matter or is it just a meme?

    If by bloat u mean installing lots of packages, the “problems” would be disk space and longer updates, and if it’s a service it will depend on the distro, i think debian/ubuntu and derivatives will usually enable the service after install, so they will use some cpu/ram too. Shouldn’t be too much of an issue but it’s a good idea to only install what u need and remove stuff when u don’t need anymore.

    What are some habits I should practice in order to keep my system organized and manageable?

    Just don’t sudo install anything outside the package manager, like node/python packages or downloaded stuff (u can usually install them somewhere in $HOME)

    Any other resources besides the Arch Wiki that I should be aware of?

    No, whatever search engine u use should be enough.

    What do you wish you knew when you first started using Linux that would have saved you a headache in the future?

    Nothing i can think at the moment, i used mint in dual boot for a while, just “switched” (deleted the windows partition) when i realized i didn’t boot it for a few months, so i was already pretty comfortable with it.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    8 months ago

    I would be careful using Kinoite as it hasn’t been around as long and doesn’t work in the same way as a transitional system. This means you could be on your own when it comes to issues. This could be especially problematic as most of the help online isn’t going to be related to Fedora let alone Kinoite.

    I would recommend Linux Mint to anyone and I use it in a VM for a bunch of things (main system is Proxmox and Fedora). It has normal apt and you can tweak it as much or as little as you like. It is very easy to use and is suitable for a broad audience.

  • ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    8 months ago

    You might find something that works better or worse in Wayland, it’s not really a big deal

    Does bloat actually matter or is it just a meme?

    Both, the little things don’t matter but you can fill up your resources with bloat if you wanted.

    Any habits or standards that I should abide by in order to save myself headaches in the future?

    Update unless you have a reason not to

    What do you wish you knew when you first started using Linux that would have saved you a headache in the future?

    Sym-links

  • Pantherina@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    Using NVIDIA please use the image from ublue.it, the official Fedora one can work but noveau is not ready. You can install Kinoite from Fedora though and give it a try, report your experience with noveau (should work and proprietary drivers are pretty scary) and then rebase to ublue (unsigned, reboot, signed, reboot)

    Wayland is worth it, Plasma 6 will come out soon and primarily target it. It just works for me, always, I have like no problem with it. Flathub flatpaks always worked because they have loose permissions.

    Xorg is an insecure mess and it is not maintained.

    Also, give the Plasma 6 preview a try! and report bugs. Its like 99% ready.


    Bloat: yes of course. Fedora Kinoite has none. If you install a few flatpaks, dont be scared by duplicate Libraries, they use deduplication to actually need less space.

    Bloat matters as a huge LUKS drive is notably slower, but only a matter of seconds on an NVME/ any SSD. And yeah, please use LUKS, encrypting afterwards is not easy. Also use a Password that can be written in US QWERTY too, a bug in current Fedora Atomic, it doesnt use your native keyboard layout. Seems to be fixed on 40 (rawhide, Plasma 6 prerelease Version of Kinoite)


    Habits:

    • install huge apps like RStudio, an IDE, a programming environment etc. in a Distrobox. If you program hardware it needs to be a root distrobox, otherwise no USB access.
    • if you git clone stuff, create a “Git” folder in your home, put that there. Guides never mention that.
    • if you use Appimages, compiled apps, binaries; create a “Programs” folder in your home
    • use Czkawka to find duplicate files

    Resources:

    What do you wish you knew when you first started using Linux that would have saved you a headache in the future?

    • Fedora Kinoite (Ubuntu broke, stable Distros suck, …)
    • use Flathub Flatpaks, they are often better
  • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    8 months ago

    One suggestion I haven’t seen addressed: use a filesystem with snapshots such as Btrfs and combine it with Timeshift.

    With Timeshift you’ll be able to roll back in time on your disk and undo stuff. It can take advantage of the lightning fast snapshots of Btrfs to do that.

    On Btrfs, separate your /home into a subvolume @home so that, when you do roll back, your personal files aren’t affected.

    Configure policies for daily and weekly snapshots on Timeshift. Don’t worry about space, they’re basically free.

    That way you can feel better experimenting with your setup, as long as the system is Bootable.

    • scratchandgame@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      Tiếng Việt
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      Split the filesystem to more partition.

      have a 1G /, 500M for /boot, have partitions for /usr, /usr/local (this isn’t used on linux so keep it small), /var, /home, and /tmp if you have little ram. Otherwise use memory-based filesystem (tmpfs), for /tmp I allocate less than 1/4 of my RAM.

      For partition size, refer to https://man.openbsd.org/disklabel.8#AUTOMATIC_DISK_ALLOCATION

      Remember to keep /usr/local small on most distro (perhaps I will allocate 5G), and increase /usr, create /opt too to prevent the disaster and allocate it the size for /usr/local. Don’t allocate all disk space, a 200G home is enough for most people and leave the rest unallocated. the formatting and fsck would be faster on smaller filesystem.

      And if you find other “cache” location, try log out and rm -rf the location, if login doesn’t break, I would mount tmpfs on that cache location too.

      • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        8 months ago

        I actively discourage neophytes from fiddling with multiple partitions. It’s a layer of complexity that is unwarranted for them, and most users. Newbies can use a volume for home and another for the rest. Experienced users can split the system volume for the use cases you mentioned. And I don’t think having separate fixed size partitions like you suggested is a good idea for anyone on a desktop.

        • scratchandgame@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          Tiếng Việt
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          8 months ago

          In my opinion newbies should learn what is called sane defaults. It’s a pity that almost every installer in the word except OpenBSD’s disklabel(8) cannot properly do automatic partitioning.

          And I don’t think having separate fixed size partitions like you suggested is a good idea for anyone on a desktop.

          I would link another article that discuss about using a huge root partition for all: https://www.bsdhowto.ch/hugeroot.html

          https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=154054091026039&w=3

          Avoid corrupting newbies’ partition is a way to keep them with Linux.

            • scratchandgame@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              Tiếng Việt
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              edit-2
              8 months ago

              I’ve updated:

              new:

              UNIX’s removable filesystem is a BENEFIT, not a BUG. DOS and then Windows’ A: B: C: D: are BUG.

              Why not take advantage of it. Microsoft always wanted a removable filesystem like UNIX. But they simply can’t get it.

              (Those can’t admit this advantage often say “Linux and Windows are almost identical”…)

                • scratchandgame@lemmy.ml
                  link
                  fedilink
                  Tiếng Việt
                  arrow-up
                  0
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  8 months ago

                  You can create either logical volume or physical partition, but make sure you have different partition for different mount point: /, /usr, /usr/local (keep small on linux), /var, /opt (if you use), /tmp (if you have little ram or don’t want to use memory filesystem).

                  What do you mean by your comment.

                  I haven’t said something about logical volumes vs physical partitions.

    • bravemonkey@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      8 months ago

      This is one of the reasons I’m using OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. It’s been a solid distro for me.

      • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        8 months ago

        Heard great things about it. Mint doesn’t suggest it as default, but if you choose Btrfs during install, it will configure @home subvolume and snapshots for you, which is nice.

      • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        Snapshots on btrfs are at the filesystem level and only really are a list of steps to get back to the old state. They are not a complete backup and you can’t move them out of the filesystem.

      • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        8 months ago

        Sure. So a snapshot in itself doesn’t consume more than a few KB. The filesystem has a Copy On Write (COW) behavior, meaning it doesn’t overwrite edits on files by default. It moves the pointer to the file to a new location and writes the new version there. If there is nothing still pointing to the old data, that space is now considered free and can be overwritten.

        A snapshot basically keeps pointers to data in the past. So it’s not entirely free, in the sense that older versions of files will remain and therefore not free up disk space as long as that snapshot exists. But it’s free in the sense that no data is copied to create a snapshot. Your filesystem is always only writing the difference to the last snapshot.

        If you configure snapshots at small intervals and configure them not to be erased, you’ll compile the history for all the changes in all your files since ever. And that will definitely cost you space.

        Typical scenarios are a daily snapshot that you keep for a week and a weekly snapshot that you keep for a month. That will cost you very little space (again in typical desktop use cases). If you have a streaming folder, a COW filesystem might not be the best idea. Or at least create a subvolume that doesn’t get snapshots.

        Snapshots don’t replace backups and if you need older data that a month, that’s what backups are for.

  • danielfgom@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    8 months ago

    I’d say avoid Wayland for now. There’s no real benefit to it at the moment and at least your card works with X11. If the Linux Mint team are happy to wait and just test it out at the moment, that tells me that is the way to go.

    Not sure what bloat people mentioned but Linux doesn’t have bloat. The distro chooses their preferred apps which they hope everyone will like but it’s easy to remove them if you don’t and use the app you want. If it’s a system app (.deb, rpm etc) it will barely take up any space anyway. Only flatpaks and snaps take up huge amount of space. I wouldn’t recommend using alot of those as you’ll be pressed for disk space

    Linux doesn’t require maintenance. It typically just works. It’s not like Windows where you run a cleaner every so often. Just just use it normally and don’t work about it.

    What I wish I knew at the start: Linux Mint is the best distro. I wasted a lot of time distro hopping only to realise I just want a stable distro that gets out of the way but is thoughtfully put together with nice touches. Mint is that. I use Linux Mint Debian Edition because I don’t like canonical.

    It’s been rock solid except for when the kernel broke my WiFi, but I had a time shift backup so in 5 minutes I had my pre-update system back and working.

  • bravemonkey@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    8 months ago

    One thing I would recommend is using a note taking app to create snippets of fixes or personalization changes for your OS that you’ve made. For me that includes things like how to add my laptop’s webcam to the blacklist and other things that I’d need to spend time looking up since I don’t do them that often.

  • cetvrti_magi@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    8 months ago
    1. I never used Wayland but Xorg works really well.

    2. Don’t copy terminal commands from internet if you don’t know what they do. Also, try new things just to try them. That’s how I started using many things that now make the core of my computer experience. Even if something looks scary I recommend giving it a go because in most cases it is much easier than it looks (at least when you have some experience with Linux).

    3. YouTube can be a good resource at the start.

    4. Switching to Linux was very smooth experience for me because I wanted to inform myself about Linux before switching just to know what I’m getting into. If you go prepared you probably won’t experience many problems.

    • scratchandgame@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      Tiếng Việt
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      8 months ago

      Don’t copy terminal commands from internet if you don’t know what they do.

      Very important. Don’t run arbitrary commands on the internet, but don’t paste sysctls and config too.

      YouTube can be a good resource at the start.

      Linux lacks much documentation. Man pages, tutorials from arch and gentoo wiki should be considered.

      that’s my feedback

  • scratchandgame@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    Tiếng Việt
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    Does bloat actually matter or is it just a meme?

    What is bloat. If I recall correctly fedora or RHEL (or both) enable the cups daemon even if you will not print anything. If I recall correctly Ubuntu enable openvpn service even you will never use it.

    But it seems neither of them have tmux installed by default.

    Feel free to test and correct me because I won’t bother those distro anymore.

    Any other resources besides the Arch Wiki that I should be aware of?

    arch wiki is a tutorial.

    Manual pages are best, and if GNU hells put the documentation in info pages, you can install info.

    If the manual page is unreadable and the program is part of the base system (on BSD all 3rd party “packages” are installed on /usr/local and base system is installed on / and /usr), try reading the BSD (OpenBSD) maintained documentation. They are also provided on-line.

    What are some habits I should practice in order to keep my system organized and manageable?

    The first is to drop all the things you learned in Windows. Many have no value, many are flawed and create bad habits, many are disposed.

    New linux user often prefer GUI or menu instead of command line tool (what I mean is different, see the next sentence). They prefer to browser chromium and chat and typing this comment instead of taking time reading manual page, books, learn how to maintenance their system, even you need to learn how to INSTALL YOUR SYSTEM CORRECTLY!! You use ‘a’ huge a partition (sorry, root / partition) with an EFI partition and a /boot partition (and perhaps a /home partition too, and that’s the end?). No /usr, no /usr/local (this hierarchy is not used in Linux so keep it small), no /var, neither the /opt hell?

    To keep your system organized and manageable, you first need KNOWLEDGE.

    What to learn:

    install and maintenance the system: partitioning, use your package manager (I hope you won’t read websites that have to teach you to use your package manager but the main topic is to use some software). Example: Absolute FreeBSD; Absolute OpenBSD (Michael W Lucas, although this is for FreeBSD and OpenBSD).

    Learn not to wine (don’t run windows software on other operating system since it will need much kernel modification, OpenBSD explicitly refuse to do; I think running windows software on linux is unstable and insecure; I’m hostile with wine.)

    UNIX programming: The UNIX programming environment; select some (like sed, awk) in the UNIX 7th edition manual pages, volume 2 which are tutorials that are still valid these day; manual page.

    useful addition: get on tmux,

    Enough for a regular user?

    my personal habit:

    I think I’m so lucky that I never do neofetch; once tried to decorate LXQt with the arc theme and then never used LXQt (since I switched to sway), if decorating the graphical interface make no sense to convenience I wouldn’t do (I myself hostile with unixporn or something like that, mean I never care about such community) and never created a colorful github’s myname/myname repo readme. (of course at the time I didn’t do learning since I’m chatting and being an discord terrorist)

    What do you wish you knew when you first started using Linux that would have saved you a headache in the future?

    I wish I could know what books to read

    But when I know it’s too late (wasted 2 year using linux and learned almost nothing), and I already switched to BSD. “Gần mực thì đen, gần đèn thì sáng.” (Near the ink you get darker, near the light you get brighter, that’s my poor translation.)

  • Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    8 months ago
    • Wayland is the new standard and X11 is the old standard. NVIDIA support is getting better. The advantages are mainly under the hood, the most relevant for most users is in security and compatibility with newer hardware. If your distro comes with Wayland, use it. If it doesn’t, then don’t worry about it.
    • Bloat’s subjective and mostly a matter of taste. Unless you’re trying to squeeze every bit of performance out of a 10 year old potato, the bloatiness of your default desktop install will not meaningfully impact your performance. Even the most bloated linux install runs lighter than Windows 10.
    • Keep up to date, especially security updates. Don’t work in root unless you have to, don’t use sudo if you don’t need it, and configure permissions properly rather than 777ing everything. Be careful adding package repositories: don’t add from other distros or other versions of your distro as that can screw up dependencies. Check your package manager or flatpak before resorting downloading random files and trying to install them manually.
    • Yes: linux subreddits/communities, Fedora’s own documentation and forums
    • How easy it is to make a mistake that’s very hard to fix. Also, understanding what “everything is a file,” the filesystem in general, and what a desktop environment even is.
  • tomcatt360@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    8 months ago

    I highly recommend timeshift. It makes it easy to make system snapshots (think system restore points) at regular intervals so that if you try something and it breaks your system, you can restore it to a working state. It has saved me hours of work from all of the reinstalls that I didn’t have to do. I wish I had something like this when I first started out with Linux. It would have saved me dozens of Linux installs.

  • TMP_NKcYUEoM7kXg4qYe@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    8 months ago

    LearnLinuxTV is a pretty good YT channel for noobs

    I recommend getting familiar with the following software:

    • Quickemu (and quickgui) - super easy way to setup a Windows (or Linux or Mac) virtual machine
    • Distrobox - easily run a different linux distro within your current linux distro. It’s useful for running ubuntu containers because of “PPAs” which are unofficial repositories which allow you to install some obscure software with a single command.
    • Timeshift - someone else already mentioned it. I actually don’t know whether it would be a problem on an atomic distro like Kionite but I had Kubuntu break after a major update. Timeshift would have been useful at that time.