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
1) 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.
If you have an Nvidia card you're probably best sticking to Xorg for now. I'm currently running Xorg with Gnome 45 since I have a GTX 1060. As I understand it Wayland is better at handling refresh rates across multiple monitors, as well as DPI scaling. These are minor issues compared to having everything working smoothly. I do feel like Xorg is on the way out now however, and I expect to switch off of it in a year or two.2) Does bloat actually have a noticeable negative impact on your system or are people just over reacting/joking.
It's mostly just a meme. It certainly won't slow you down. What it does do is take up space on your hard drive and in your menus. I do understand taking pleasure in ensuring that your system is trimmed down to only what you really need. But don't worry about it at all.3) What are some habits I should practice in order to keep my system organized and manageable?
The same habits you have on Windows. Keep your files and folders in order. Beyond that there's not much you need to worry about, especially with Kinoite.4) Any habits or standards that I should abide by in order to save myself headaches in the future?
Not that I can think of off the top of my head. Most important is leaning to RTFM, meaning go read the documentation for your distro (or just look at the Arch wiki) when you have an issue. If you run into a problem and need to ask for help, make sure you don't do the XY problem.5) Any other resources besides the AUR that I should be aware of?
I don't think Fedora Kinoite supports AUR, that's an Arch Linux thing. You'll be getting 99% of your apps from Flatpak.6) What do you wish you knew when you first started using Linux that would have saved you a headache in the future?
A long time ago I made a thread that got shared around a bit about how I thought the command line was pushed by Linux anoraks who didn't understand the needs of the common user. I've used Linux a lot since then and I've changed my perspective: the command line is your best friend. It lets you do exactly what you want to do very quickly. It's fast, it's efficient, it's beautiful. If you learn it a whole world of additional tools command line tools will open to you (ssh, grep, etc). There's a reason that places like /c/unixporn love pictures of open terminals with neofetch loaded up.Thank you for answering.
spoiler
Just to be clear the AUR thing was just a typo, I meant to type arch wiki mb.
I'd like to ask you some clarifying question.
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Linux uses the File System Hierarchy which Windows does not use. How do I keep my system organized while keeping to the FSH.
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This isn't really a question but my thoughts on your answer.
I really like the command line. I enjoy using it more than GUIs, but I don't think the terminal should be pushed to the common user for mass adoption. Many of my friends don't own desktop computers, some don't own any other computer besides their phone. When I introduced them to my desktop, they were typing at less than 20 wpm with 2 fingers. No matter how great of a product Linux becomes in the future, It won't see mass adoption as long as
A) non consumer friendly UX gets pushed and
B) There is no marketing force behind it
I really only learned of and got into Linux because SomeOrdinaryGamer and r/Unixporn. These were my first positive introductions to Linux. On my marketing point, Android, for example, has side loading, Fdroid, and lots of options for customizability, yet iOS is still the dominant market share and is continuing to grow.
If Linux want true mass adoption then there must be a real effort to make the command line as optional as possible, or the linux community must start trying to appeal to the types of people that would give Linux a shot if they new it existed. Returning to SomeOrdinaryGamer, that man gets millions of views per month and I seriously doubt most of them are Linux users.
Linux uses the File System Hierarchy which Windows does not use. How do I keep my system organized while keeping to the FSH.
Altogether it's actually not that different from Windows, it's just shuffled around a bit. You'll have your /home/yourusername/ folder, which is where you'll put most of your files. If you have more than one hard drive in your machine you can mount it under /mnt/ and then store the files on it as you would normally. You don't have to worry about where your programs are stored (your package manager will take care of that for you).re: the command line
For the most part I agree, but I also think it's a solved problem. A linux install with Gnome is on par with Mac OS when it comes to user friendliness, with no need to ever look at a terminal in order to do things. The UX here is nearly a solved issue. However I also feel that "growth" or "mainstream success" is no longer something I feel like I need linux to achieve. When I started using Linux in 2009 half of the programs I tried were pale copies of proprietary software. WINE barely worked. Game support was almost non-existant. WiFi drivers were genuinely almost always broken. Flash forward fifteen years and all of these issues are fixed. Using Linux on a day to day basis makes me happy, I no longer feel like I'm missing out on anything by using it. That is such an incredible leap to take. The key takeaway is that all of these problems were solved without Linux becoming "mainstream". It and the community around it have just kept moving along and making it better over time. It's been lovely to watch it grow like that. A fully-featured and powerful terminal is just one part of this fantastic, open computing environment that I love.As an additional note to this, I do think that Linux is poised to really take off among one particular demographic: PC gamers that build their own machines and can now finally see a good alternative to forking over $150 to Microsoft for their OS. The Steam Deck has definitely turned heads here. I don't think the legions of people buying laptops to take notes during university lectures and browse Facebook (the "20 wpm typers" out there) will be very interested in Linux machines no matter what we do, so let's focus the energy where it counts.
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Wayland: I would (and do) stick to xorg for now. Wayland isnt quite at the level where it can fully replace xorg yet.
Bloat matters, but not to a worrysome extent. Most users probably won't notice it outside of specialized customization, and I'm sure you won't either.
Not so much on the managerial or organizational side, but I highly recommend getting used to and comfortable with the shell. Start with the easy stuff: file operations such as mv, cp, chmod and so forth, and use a text editor of your choice to edit text files. The memes would have you use vim, and while that is my preferred editor, more beginner friendly ones, such as nano, will do just fine.
Resources: I find that most of the time that I need input, either asking somewhere relevant (such as here), or looking it up on stackexchange will give me the result I'm after.
Things I wish I knew: When you can achieve what you want via the package manager, do it. Installing and removing stuff without it tends to gradually change your OS into a state where every library requirement is in conflict with some other requirement.
Don't listen to the trolls please, you have to think long term, how will you grow in the next 2 to 5 (or even 10) years, because without a doubt you will grow and have a learning curve which alters the way you will use your machine. There are tons and tons of solutions and people pitching it from their Linux ricer power user perspective.
Don't make yourself regret and/or spent countless hours switching back and forth, solving issues, looking through help articles, etc etc
I know it's hard but trust me, you literally cannot make a good choice now with your current state. Just install Ubuntu and get a hang of it, use it, do your stuff you want to do and when you are comfortable with Ubuntu, then throw that piece of junk in the trash and switch to Debian Stable - no, not SID, no you won't miss out on all the cool bleeding edge AUR packages.
When you take this path I described you will grow with the system and you will be able to make the decision based on your needs, wants and use cases. Trust me or suffer, I am sorry new guy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
UNIX's removable filesystem is a BENEFIT, not a BUG. DOS and then Windows' A: B: C: D: are BUGS.
Why not take advantage of it. Microsoft always wanted a removable filesystem like UNIX. But they simply can't get it.
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.
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"...)
Dude, that has nothing to do with logical volumes vs physical partitions. You're tilting at the wrong windmill.
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.
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 have 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.)
I've been running kinoite on my laptop for a short while now, and I wanted to address a few miscellaneous things.
First: I recommend trying the out of the box experience for a while before going far customizing it. For example, someone mentioned your filesystem layout with subvolumes: that's the default in kinoite: home, var, and root are in subvolumes.
Second: Wayland either is or is about to be the default in fedora (I'm running the beta for the next version, and it's Wayland by default). Try it and see if you have issues before trying to switch to x11.
Flatpak is your first stop for installing software on kinoite, but the fedora repo that's configured by default is missing a lot. If <your favorite search engine> shows software available that you don't see in discover/flatpak, you need to add the flathub repo, which is easy to do, but not obvious (to me) that it wasn't the default.
Finally, Nvidia experience might not be good ootb. You might need to take extra steps to get the proprietary Nvidia driver.
Good luck with your endeavor!
Edit: Firefox
I don't understand why the default install of Firefox isn't the flatpak version. Switch to the flatpak version and you won't have to worry about codecs.
Lol, I just noticed that this thread is 3 weeks old... How is your setup working out?
