Hiya,
I don’t suppose anyone has a good source / 15 minutes and a drive to lecture a Linux noobie on some basic Linux functions or things to read up on?
Perhaps unsurprising given the gestures wildly to everything, but I have been planning to switch over to Linux on my home machine for a long time now and I feel like Microsoft slowly, inexorably, forcing the swap to Win11 is as great an excuse to finally bite the bullet as I’m likely to get.
A bit of background, I am an IT guy with many years of experience in Windows and some small bit in Mac. I am an experienced coder with a good fundamental understanding of Unix environments and how to make systems talk to each other. Im comfortable with deep, technical stuff, but, especially in new systems I have a bit of a hard time with abbreviations and acronyms. So I don’t need a whole “Linux for Dummies” as I feel like I have a pretty firm grasp on the basics. I just want to know if there’s any convenient tips or tricks to make the transition easier.
For example, I have literally no idea what distro I should use lol. I’ve spent a while researching but given how customizable it all is, after a while it all kinda just mushed itself into a gray maisma in my brain. I use my home machine almost exclusively for gaming and some light coding projects, but I also want to be able to play around with it and do some independent learning.
I just need a good source that can give me the basics on where and how to translate my knowledge of Windows to insert Linux distro. I know it’s a completely new OS so I will need to learn a lot of new things. But at their core computers are computers so some things need to be the same, I’m just not sure what to look for.
Since you are more familiar with Windows, Linux Mint may be a good start. Can also try PopOS for a different desktop layout, more similar to Mac. These are Ubuntu based systems. Can also give Fedora a try, but may require a bit more of a learning curve. There is also Nobora for a more gaming oriented version of fedora. Try out the live previews before installing to make sure your system works properly.
Not sure if this is something that will help but the site Linux Journey might help you learn how to use and understand Linux more. This is more the core stuff and command line oriented.
For easier transition, start using programs that are available on both systems so you don’t have to jump in cold turkey, if that may be too much. When looking for programs on Linux, always use the provided store first to search. Since you are a programmer, you are aware that there will always be multiple ways to do the same thing, web searching is your friend, just make sure you are searching for the right based system, in the examples above, Fedora or Ubuntu. For programming you are going to enjoy Linux more than windows :).
Remember this is a journey and will take time. Have fun!
On PopOS i would wait until the new UI, as the current one has many incompatibilities. I would fully recommend linux mint, its stable, workable and easily customizable with their own ui cinamon.
This is all fantastic info and exactly what I wss looking for, thank you!
I didnt even realize live previews were a thing lol. Only 1 question really, I though Ubuntu was an OS, but there are others built on it? Is that just how some distros are or is this a fundamental misunderstanding on my part?
In a high level, you are correct that Ubuntu is a standalone OS like Fedora. Other distributions have used the background packages that make up Ubuntu to form their own OS with changes here and there. It is similar to how Ubuntu is built on top of Debian.
Sure others can explain this better.
Because linux is open source, distro design is iterative. You can build everything from scratch, or you can take someone else’s distro, change a couple things, and maintain your own version. If someone else has already done 90% of the work, you can save lots of time and energy by just starting there and building on it.
For example, Debian is built from scratch. Ubuntu is derived Debian. Pop!_OS is derived Ubuntu. Mint has distros derived from either Ubuntu or Debian. Some distros like Ubuntu have flavors, where everything under the hood is kept the same but the desktop is different: for example, Kubuntu is Ubuntu with the KDE Plasma desktop environment, and is maintained by the Kubuntu project.
When you go to choose a distro, the choices may seem daunting. But once you realize just how many distros are starting with some other distro and making a few small changes, the more you’ll realize that the distinctions between them don’t really matter and distro selection is more a matter of taste. Sure, Ubuntu may have dozens of derivatives, but all those derivatives are basically just Ubuntu with a slightly different look and feel, so the choice really isn’t as big as it seems.