I start: the most important thing is not the desktop, it’s the package manager.

  • Tom@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    That after getting used to Linux I will hate to be forced to use less free operating systems.

      • Holzkohlen@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        I could but I always get a feeling like I’m being monitored constantly. Like imagine being at work and if you don’t move your mouse for a few minutes you’d get a warning or something. Or remember using a computer at school where the teacher could literally see the screen of every student, yeah like that.

      • lud@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Try micro.

        It’s much better and quite easy if not easier to use than nano. It should really be the default simple editor.

      • moormaan@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        I hear you 😁. For whatever reason I stuck with the Vim tutorial and did it a few times over the years. Now I’m using the IdeaVIM extension in IntelliJ - that mode system is just sooi powerful. It has a horrible learning curve, yes, but if you manage to stick with it, it pays huge dividends. I probably know, like, 18% of all commands, and it completely changed how I edit files (mostly for coding, but also text).

          • JaxNakamura@programming.dev
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            1 year ago

            Use vimtutor. It comes with vim and teaches you to the basic vim commands from within vim.

            And don’t worry about exiting vim, that’s lesson 1.2 :)

            • 𝕸𝖔𝖘𝖘@infosec.pub
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              1 year ago

              Hahaha!!! I actually know how to exit Vim. Had to learn it when setting up a server config on a server that only had Vim installed. Once set up, nano got installed.

              This vimtutor looks pretty awesome, and I can’t wait to get learning on it. In all honesty, vim does looks super helpful. It’s just that I usually use text editors to quickly setup configs, when gui won’t do or I’m just done with gui for the moment. During those times, my patience is usually low, and searching how to save or quit or open or do any other basic functionality, reduces that patience further. But vimtutor makes it a point to learn vim when I’m not trying to get in, get it done, and get out. This may work for me. I may actually learn vim!

    • Swarfega@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I remember, back in the day, I asked on IRC how to edit a file in Linux. Someone said vi. Little did I know that in chat someone said, the next question is how do I quit. I asked that exact question. Yes chat erupted.

    • Slotos@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      Either by making it segfault or you don’t.

      I got a whole software developer career going out of my attempts to exit vim.

    • ExLisper@linux.community
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      1 year ago

      I vaguely remember pressing Alt+F4 while trying to close vim in a terminal once. It did switch to me login prompt so I thought it worked.

    • Fonzie!@ttrpg.network
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      1 year ago

      For people who actually don’t know this, yet: Type :x.
      This means “eXit, save any changes”

      If you want to leave and discard your changes, type :q!
      The :q means “Quit”, without any other instructions. This will warn you if you changed anything, adding ! means “force this command”.

  • Aa!@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I guess the main things would be:

    • As a beginner, don’t bother trying to dual boot – If you still need a Windows box, get some cheap hardware to do your Linux work on. It’s too easy to screw up both systems otherwise.
    • Don’t get too hung up on a specific distro, the better you are at dealing with different configurations, the better prepared you will be for whatever comes. Once you’ve gotten one set up, don’t be afraid to just try a different one.
    • Dandroid@dandroid.app
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      1 year ago

      I never had a problem dual booting, even as a beginner. I always kept everything on two separate drives, though, each with their own EFI partition.

        • Jayb151@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I’ve also always done dual boot on one drive, no real problems other than when I know I caused the problem.

          Also… What’s up with that user name?

    • flashgnash@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I did the opposite, have always dual booted my laptops and had win on my PC until quite recently now that I’m comfortable enough not to need a safety net anymore

    • Doc Blaze@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      If you have the space for a spare I much prefer hot swapping hard drives. it’s a little physical inconvenience but much harder to screw anything up. plus, full disk encryption is still an option

  • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    The 1:1 windows:Linux replacement is just a means to keep you on Windows. Once you learn Linux, you’ll come to understand how much of a farce it is and how it’s designed to keep you away

  • Montagge@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    That I could put /home on a different drive
    That I would never boot into Windows again so having partitions for it was a waste of time
    That mounting drives with their uuid as the mount location is insane

    • SneakyThunder@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      That mounting drives with their uuid as the mount location is insane

      Why tho? Kernel sometimes can index drives in different order (if you have multiple drives), screwing your mount locations. But UUID is always the same

      • GamingChairModel@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        You can give your partitions labels and mount by label. Labels are persistent, like UUIDs, but are also easier to remember and copy.

        • Holzkohlen@feddit.de
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          But why would I even try to remember them? Just look them up. Nowadays I don’t even see them since I use Gnome Disk Utility or KDE partition manager to automount them (they both just write to your /etc/fstab)

          • GamingChairModel@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            But why would I even try to remember them? Just look them up.

            For me, I used labels when setting up those volumes manually. Creating a LUKS container, setting up LVM groups and volumes, configuring my bootloader to decrypt the correct encrypted disk, etc. It was just easier to remember which device label was my encrypted container, which was the group, and what the different volumes were. And once the labels were made, well, I just used them.

  • Cwilliams@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    I learned to never settle. If you don’t like the default workflow of Gnome, try some extensions, or even a different DE. Same with Package Managers. If you don’t like the syntax, make an alias. Don’t just “deal with it”. Windows has brainwashed people into thinking that there is only one way to do a thing.

    • s20@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      This is kinda funny to me because I hadn’t realized how terrible the Windows workflow was for me until Gnome 3 came out.

      Ever since, while I’ll use extensions for stuff like alphabetical app grid and Caffeine, I never do anything that changes the Gnome workflow. It’s not for everyone, but it absolutely is for me.

    • Dudewitbow@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Its why I always find it funny when people complain about changes to the start bar, because surely there isnt a bunch of 3rd party options in existance that change it, and can mimic 7’s start bar.

      • lud@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I have heard that shell replacements are often very buggy on Windows.

        • Dudewitbow@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Ive been using classic(then open) shell since moving off of 7 for consistency. for the most part, there haven’t been any serious bugs that im aware of. Because the app works between windows versions, start bar for me at least has been pretty much consistent since windows 7 existed, and the stuff id adjust to would be changes in some apps (e.g control panel > settings) that happened overtime.

          The problem of some users is they want the vanilla experience to be what they want when there are options to not make something vanilla. Similar to debates on linux distros on whether you want a very specific UI design vs having a distro that is personalizable and customizable based on preference.

    • flashgnash@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      See I’ve run into an issue now where I like and am used to GNOME, but I also want to try a tiling WM and doesn’t seem like there’s really a good way to do that in gnome

      • L3ft_F13ld!@links.hackliberty.org
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        1 year ago

        You can install the tiling WM and try it seperately. Might even be possible to combine them too, but that might get pretty involved and hacky since Gnome doesn’t like it when you stray from “the path” that they deem correct.

        • flashgnash@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          I’d probably just do one or the other, don’t want to be using nonstandard stuff within my non-standard stuff

          • L3ft_F13ld!@links.hackliberty.org
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            1 year ago

            I know XFCE is a popular choice for people who want to add a tiling WM. That was a combo that I heard about quite a bit in the past if that’s something you’d wanna try. XFCE + i3 might be nice.

  • Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Trying not to make it windows.

    There’s a lot of conveniences that Windows comes default with.

    When I switched to Linux, my immediate goal was to find alternatives for EVERYTHING. That lead to being disappointed by a lot.

    Understanding Linux and also recognizing there’s a lot of shit I don’t need (that windows was giving me for the sake of VALUE) was a game changer.

    • secret301@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Understanding Linux and also recognizing there’s a lot of shit I don’t need (that windows was giving me for the sake of VALUE) was a game changer.

      This 100%! After using Linux for the past few years I’ve realized a lot of the crap windows has by default is stuffed in there to have something to market.

    • Rusty@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Nowadays there’s a lot of good alternatives for everything, including windows hello for any password prompt

  • Papamousse@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    It was free, I could not afford a Sun workstation and Minix had problems, so when this Finnish guy wrote in Usenet that he was working on a free kernel/OS, it was cool!

      • Cpo@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        The biggest bonus to the democratic world stems from just one individual. And the rest of the world believing in his idea.

        So never say that just you cannot make a difference in this world.

        Because you can!

    • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      386BSD was a thing back then too, but there was the AT&T lawsuit that scared everyone away. That gave Linux an opportunity.

  • heartlessevil@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    Linux is pretty easy to use nowadays. The only thing I would check before switching is driver compatibility.

    • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      I wouldn’t use ZFS. Too risky. If a new kernel comes along and ZFS fails to build or something, my system will be unbootable.

      Btrfs scratches my copy-on-write/checksum/integrated RAID itch well enough anyway.

      • supert@lemmy.sdfeu.org
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        1 year ago

        Nix and ubuntu have in kernel support. Void’s module build system also prevents this situation. I use nix and void, so have never faced this problem.

      • dmrzl@programming.dev
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        1 year ago

        In contrast to btrfs it doesn’t break your data. Everyone learns the hard way not to use btrfs…

      • supert@lemmy.sdfeu.org
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        1 year ago

        I gave up on btrfs when Icouldn’t recover from a full disk situation (years ago, may be better nwo). But zfs tooling is so good, reliable and intuitive, I’d not want to switch anyway.

    • rotopenguin@infosec.pub
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      1 year ago

      By the time you’ve dressed out an Rpi to be halfway usable, you’ve spent about as much as a decent NUC. And all you have to show for it is a slow-as-mud sd card, hardly any video acceleration, a USB stack that only crashes sometimes, a busy OOM killer, and no software.

      Get an N95 based nuc. A Beelink with 8/256 runs about $150, and it just works. (Well, you might need pcie_aspm=off).

    • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
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      It’s pretty important on Windows too, though. Always “eject” or “safely remove hardware” before unplugging!

      • its_pizza@sopuli.xyz
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        Not in Windows 10/11. You can still “eject” if it makes you feel better, but it’s basically redundant. They reworked the support for removable media so they are always ready to remove except during active read/write operations.

        • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          Read/write operations can happen in the background at any moment as long as the drive is mounted, so that’s not terribly comforting.

          Anyway, Windows has always avoided deferring writes on removable media, for as long as it’s been capable of deferring writes at all. That’s not new in Windows 10.

          Linux has a mount option, sync, to do the same thing. Dunno if any desktop environments actually use it, but they could. Besides being slower, though, it has the downside of causing more write operations (since they can’t be batched together into fewer, larger writes), so flash drives will wear out faster. I imagine Windows’ behavior has the same problem, although with Windows users accustomed to pulling out their drives without unmounting, I suppose that’s the lesser of two evils.

      • guillermohs9@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        On Windows, I often simply took out the USB drive without “safely removing” it. The data was there 99% of the time. On Linux, if I’m not mistaken, unmounting the drive before disconnecting is what actually writes data to it.

        • patatahooligan@lemmy.world
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          I don’t think Linux literally waits for you to unmount the drive before it decides to write to it. It looks like that because the buffering is completely hidden from the user.

          For example say you want to transfer a few GB from your SSD to a slow USB drive. Let’s say:

          • it takes about half a minute to read the data from the SSD
          • it takes ten minutes to write it to the USB
          • the data fits in the spare room you have in RAM at the moment

          In this scenario, the kernel will take half a minute to read the data into the RAM and then report that the file transfer is complete. Whatever program is being used will also report to the user that the transfer is complete. The kernel should have already started writing to the drive as soon as the data started being read into the RAM, so it should take another nine and a half minutes to complete the transfer in the background.

          So if you unmount at that point, you will have to wait nine and a half minutes. But if you leave it running and try to unmount ten minutes later it should be close to instant. That’s because the kernel kept on writing in the background and was not waiting for you to unmount the drive in order to commit the writes.

          I’m not sure but I think on Windows the file manager is aware of the buffering so this doesn’t happen, at least not for so long. But I think you can still end up with corrupted files if you don’t safely remove it.