The best one, of course
Of course! There is nothing like Hannah Montana Linux! 😌
Nuh uh, obviously its AmogOS
Mint, judge me
PS anyone have any favorite resources for absolute tech illiterate noobs? I’m trying, but without a baseline understanding of the subject, it’s hard to find the right guides
you’re not using debian? that must mean you hate freedom.
My advice is to get a hobby. Self-hosting, or home automation to name a few examples. When you have a specific goal for something you want to do, it’s a lot easier to learn.
First half has the actual advice
Mint is a very nice starting distro tbh, it was my first too!
This may be shit advice, but it may help.
I have a mint laptop and was also linux illiterate when I started. The way I did most of my learning was by googling (or duckduckgo-ing) “How do I [x] linux mint” and reading through stack overflow threads. If this doesn’t return results, (almost) any solution for Debian or Ubuntu will work on Mint.
In general, I just assumed that if I thought the computer could do it, there would be a way to do it.
Mint is the shit! The only reason I don’t use it is because they don’t have a native KDE version. If they ever do, I plan on going right back Mint.
Depends on what you’re wanting to learn. I’m a fellow tech illiterate noob, but I’ve been off and on with Linux since like 2006. Finally switched full time a few years ago. Honestly, with Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora I’ve found you basically can just set it and forget it, depending on your use case. YouTube has been my best friend whenever I have a problem, normally I type my issue into that before even google. How long have you been using Linux? If you’re still in the distro hopping phase,I suggest trying to swap Desktop environments instead of distros, as it gives you a little experience with the terminal, is well documented on how to do it, and gives you a good idea of what kind of UI you want
That’s all I got, though. I really am pretty illiterate at tech stuff haha
What exactly are you trying to do?
That’s the thing, I don’t know enough to know what to even ask. So far I’ve been able to follow step-by-step instructions for installing Mint and downloading software, but I don’t know what I’m doing at all.
One example of something I spent hours on is adding Cura to the panel. I finally got that done while I was writing this comment by following AndyMH’s answer here.
Now, I can read
I would move the appimage into a folder in PATH. If you create a folder /home/you/bin it is automatically added to PATH next time you boot.
And I can do that. I have no idea what PATH is or why I want to do that, but I can do it. And I can look it up, and I’m sure I’ll eventually get to a point where all of this makes sense to me, but I feel kind of helpless when I have to look up multiple terms every time I want to do something as simple as adding an application to the panel
That’s the thing, I don’t know enough to know what to even ask.
Fair enough.
I have no idea what PATH is or why I want to do that, but I can do it
Its really only for non standard installs. That is outside of the package manager or flatpak.
PATHis just where the computer will look for executables. Since you installed from source or some other side then it won’t be in the normal/bin. You’re just updating yourPATHto include other places.
This is great. Just to let you know, whatever decision you make is wrong. Cheers!
Still works though!
Why?
The only people who hate Linux users more than windows and Mac users are Linux users who think you chose the wrong distro
I’ve always felt good about using Ubuntu and derivatives. I get their opinions and they have some good points, but I’m not sure why I’d let that change my flow.
Because Ubuntu sucks! 👎 Here’s a list of why:
-
Snaps = 👹
-
Ads in start menu (they did this before Winblows!)
-
Unity is sooo fucking slow and stupid. That dumbass bar of most used apps always present taking up screen space 🙉
-
Canonical doesn’t give a shit what users want🖕
But the most important part is that I really don’t care. I don’t use your computer. You do. So use whatever the 🔥hell🔥 you want. Use a version of Winblows 🪟 themed to look like Arch 🤭, wallpaper and all👌, then post screenshots on the Internet about your superiority 💪.
Live how you want! And if someone shames you for it, kick them out of you life 😎
-
Because there’s always going to be someone who says the distro you liked the most is not the distro you should be using. (I use Arch btw)
Because of in-fighting.
Linux Mint. Cinnamon. With a Windows Vista theme. It confuses and/or irritates everyone who sees it.
I was going to go Mint/Cinnamon, but now I’m going to more.
kde has some impressive windows themes that are REALLY convincing
I’m using the Windows XP Bliss wallpaper on my Fedora PC at work. I’ve had a few people ask about it haha. Most of the company uses Macs.
What’s it called?
Windon’t
^ this ^
Not sure but it’s by B00merang-Project. Check their site.
LDME/Cinnamon
Nice! Not my thing but I’m glad that you can enjoy the Vista theme (I remember enjoying it when it came out)
Hannah Montana Linux
That was one of the first distros to support Wayland, so it has my begrudging respect.
Hannah Montana FTW
RebeccaBlackOS > Hannah Montana Linux
It’s Saturday not Friday
Does that mean you don’t have to get down to the bus stop?
Is it really a choice?
TEMPLEOS
Possibly a perfect use of this.
So going off the chalice in the movie, the distro that will save you from judgment is the plainest one – the one with the least bloat? That tracks.
“the cup of a
carpentercoder”So… Slackware?
Of course. No other distro existed when Jesus was alive.
I use arch, err nixos/nix on macOS btw. Do I win or have I made the Linux nerds angy?
I recently installed Manjaro. It works for my games right now
I highly recommend avoiding manjaro like the plague, their team is incredibly incompetent (see: https://manjarno.pages.dev/ ), I say this as someone who has given people manjaro for years and regretted it, I was also their it person, manjaro regularly broke every few months and gave people a very bad taste of linux
for example, why are kernels given version numbers in packages? This caused 3 separate peoples computers to break multiple times. Everything good about manjaro comes from arch, everything bad about manjaro comes from the manjaro team.
Y’know how it’s not rolling release because they delay packages by 2 weeks? They actually do no testing in this time. How do I know this? They pushed an update that caused steam to uninstall your desktop environment. Famously covered by linus tech tips… this is something that should have easily been caught, and yet the two week window did absolutely nothing.
the truth is for manjaro there is no real usecase, there’s no set of desires that align with manjaro being the best choice for you. I am not asking you to switch away from manjaro, but I do not think we should ever recommend it to anyone, and on your next machine, I recommend trying the arch installer.
But if what you’re looking for is an easy pre-setup arch, use endeavoros
If you want something simple and up to date, use fedora kinoite
If you’re a power user and want to configure every little thing about their system, use arch or nixos
If you don’t care at all about updates and want the most rock solid system possible, debian.
I hear you. I was looking more for Arch with less of a hassle. Something similar to my Steamdeck. I guess I should just wipe this weekend for something else. I really want something for playing my steam and GOG games that works with my Nvidia 3080.
Luckily for me I keep every game installed on different Steam Libraries so wiping my install drive to put something else in isn’t difficult.
What about arch is it that you want?
I do a ton of distro research because I try to convert people to linux a lot so I might be able to help you with that.
https://bazzite.gg/ this is probably what you want, make sure to install the nvidia version.
If openSUSE Slowroll wasn’t experimental I’d recommend it in place of Manjaro. It’s a rolling release with monthly releases.
I really like Tumbleweed. Sure it updates a lot, but it doesn’t force updates so you can take it at your own pace.
SUSE’s Open Build Service absolutely rules, too. I use Fedora personally, but would switch to Tumbleweed any day. I’ve gone back and forth, eventually settling on Fedora only because of familiarity with Red Hat.
There are things I miss, big one being Zypper. It’s slow as balls but it’s usability and ability to dig through packages is unmatched, in my opinion.
Screw that You’re all great everybody from slackware to steam deck.
to steam deck.
to SteamOS
Slack where?
Slack there!
Slack where?
Slack there?
Slack here!
Slack there?
Steam Deck is weird. I mean, I love it, but coming from vanilla Arch it can be frustrating at times. Discover is terrible. Luckily, Distrobox is a thing.
Portage Prefix is a thing too
I wasn’t aware of it. It’s certainly an option, but Gentoo isn’t for me.
I putz with Discover sometimes. Though I have no idea how it resolves package updates under the hood, as it often will produce a different manifest than running dnf itself.
What would you like to see improved?
I usually can’t find what I’m looking for, so a larger catalogue would go a long way. I also had problems with some software versions. The one that comes to mind is that Firefox had behavior with the save dialogue that I don’t like. It’s a minor issue, but one that I don’t have with the build in the Arch repo. I have a vague memory of something just not working, but I couldn’t tell you what at this point.
Ah, I see! Yeah, a bigger catalog would be nice. You can add more repositories to it, enable Flathub, which provide more options, but something about it does feel hamstrung.
The Firefox thing is something I know about! You can set a config option in the
about:configpage to tell Firefox to use your desktop’s standard dialogue. It has to do with XDG Desktop specifications, I thinkIt uses the system dialogue, but it starts from the same directory each time. If I’m saving files it’s usually multiple files in succession, so I want the dialogue to start off pointed at the last directory I saved to. The Arch build does that.
Ooohh! Interesting. You’ve got me curious about that now. I’ll have to look into it.
Put any distro in front of me and provided I don’t need to master it, I’m good. Ubuntu is fine. Debian is fine. RedHat is fine. Fedora is fine. I even have a tiny low-end system that is using Bohdi. Whatever. We’re all using mostly the same kernel anyway.
90% of what I do is in a container anyway so it almost doesn’t matter; half the time that means Alpine, but not really. That includes both consuming products from upstream as well as software development. I also practically live in the terminal, so I couldn’t care less what GUI subsystem is in play, even while I’m using it.
That’s all well and good, but can we talk about proper use of this meme template?
Shouldn’t it be “further”? farther is for physical distance, further is for figurative/metaphorical distance.
"I am altering the language, pray… "
Yes
deleted by creator
Eh it works just fine 🤷♂️
Nooo !!! You can’t just use the meme template how you want to, even if it’s funny !!!11!1!1!1
Ah yes, that’s exactly what I said.
I’m shocked there wasn’t a single minion or cry-laugh emoji plastered on.
This is why you just fucking lie and say “Arch btw”
Or just suck it up and learn Arch and never worry about the incredibly minor differences in distros
Mint Cinnamon. Fight me.
For as much as Linux nerds (myself absolutely included) complain about distros like Ubuntu and Manjaro, I’d still take either one over Windows or MacOS any day.
Mac OSX isn’t bad… so long as you sell it your soul, and don’t want freedom in return, it’s great 👍.
I kid… mostly - it’s iOS that is horrifying, but Mac OSX is still Unix (tho not GNU), so not anywhere within leagues of Microdick.
And - possibly dumb question - couldn’t you always just run a Linux VM at near-native speed, and get the benefits of both?
You can use UTM on an M1 or up Macbook and iOS/iPadOS:
https://getutm.app/
It is not VirtualBox yet, but it is moving fast. And thank $deity it’s not Oracle… like VirtualBoxHow does this work with containers?
Mac is BSD, and the Darwin kernel is open source.
It’s worth noting that Apple has (for example) gone so far as to replace bash with zsh just because the GPL v3 was too copyleft for them to handle. In other words, fuck Apple.
Right decision but for the wrong reason.
Oh, I thought it was because zsh is better.
That’s the point of the BSD license.
Exactly; fuck BSD too.
Unless you’re a copyleft developer your opinion on the decisions of the creators is hilariously irrelevant.
I forgot about the latter, thanks for the reminder:-).
I’d say iOS is still unix too, just rootless.
The company that laid me off let me keep my Mac which was a nice parting gift. I don’t think I’d ever buy one myself. They’re just way to expensive.
I hoped for that at my previous job, and they said it could happen… but it was never going to, and it was a false hope offered. Why do that to me man…? 😭
Then I come to my current job, and they have a super old Mac laptop that was barely holding on that nobody else wanted, and I’m like “yes please”!
Bc if its Windows vs. Mac, and especially if “nothing” isn’t even an option, then a million times out of a million I will choose super old, barely holding on Mac that nobody else wants.:-)
It’s a single SSH command away from my work Linux, and it has MacVim, tons of other open source software available, plus a bunch of stuff that only Mac OSX has, like Preview and other fairly nice tools, which have open source equivalents like ImageMagick and gimp, but aren’t nearly as easy to use.
I don’t need a nice car, and I went without one entirely until I moved to the Midwest where it becomes absolutely necessary, but it’s essential to have a good computer for me:-).
A VM doesn’t change the underlying OS collecting data from you
I had to look it up (e.g. https://www.extremetech.com/internet/317371-evaluating-apples-data-collection-in-macos-big-sur) and damn, I didn’t know that they collected and sent THAT detailed of info!? (and perhaps they didn’t, until Big Sur)
Even so, as the other reply mentioned, it’s still leagues away from Windows at this point. But yeah, fair then that both Windows and Mac OSX are doing it, while Linux is not.
Still, if you had to pick a machine for your grandma to use, or like either Windows or Mac at work (but not Linux, though lets say that there is a terminal SSH option to Linux available from either), I would pick Mac OSX. It’s fine if others would pick Linux for the former, but I don’t think Mac OSX is a bad choice there.
While Windows… urg, is basically synonymous with being a cuss word nowadays. Witch: “a pox be upon thee - nay, moresooth, may you be cursed to only use Windows for the rest of your days!” (Onlookers: “gasp! what could anyone have done to be cursed with that bad of a punishment!? I would not wish that upon even my worst enemy!?”) hehe:-P
That link doesn’t say what you think it does.
That Apple blocks you from running every program you put onto it until/unless it can be properly certified, and that “Big Sur can bypass any firewall restrictions the end-user attempts to create”? It’s true that it’s not nearly as bad as it may sound at first, and they even released a statement that:
We do not use data from these checks to learn what individual users are launching or running on their devices.
Notarization checks if the app contains known malware using an encrypted connection that is resilient to server failures.
These security checks have never included the user’s Apple ID or the identity of their device. To further protect privacy, we have stopped logging IP addresses associated with Developer ID certificate checks, and we will ensure that any collected IP addresses are removed from logs.
Though I also understand that if someone wants the ultimate in privacy, it’s difficult to trust such a corporate promise, especially one like Apple known to hide or lie about such things. (Edit: also… “developer ID certificate checks”, so if you don’t register with Apple as a known developer then…?)
I still use Mac OSX myself, but if someone wants to avoid that and use Linux for this reason, I’m not going to argue with them - whereas I would push back a little bit if a friend were to tell me they planned to put Windows (as the primary OS) onto a machine.
Yeah, that’s what network-level blocking is for.
Zenarmor ftw.
damn had not heard of that and I have so many friends fucking with OPNsense. Thanks!
couldn’t you always just run a Linux VM at near-native speed, and get the benefits of both?
The obvious downside is that Linux is no longer the host OS. MacOS or Windows would be closed source code managing your hardware. And any VM could only be as fast as the host OS allows it to be.
The host OS is likewise limited, but more by hardware, so it might be a small performance tradeoff, depending on whether, as you brought up, you need Linux to be ultimately in control rather than to simply run some software.
So that would not always work, ofc… but it sometimes would!:-)
new to Linux, my first distro was and is Manjaro. what do people complain about? i love it and am glad i left windows for it :)
This website has a decent summary: https://manjarno.pages.dev/
TL:DR: Repeated dumb mistakes that a (relatively) big distro like Manjaro should not be making. Haven’t heard any drama in the past year or so though, so maybe they’ve finally gotten their act together. Time will tell.
679 days since the last incident.
I feel like this incident is over blown. The weird holding back for 2 weeks without testing is a valid complaint though.
Idk, it worked well for me. Been on fedora for a while now.
It’s too “easy” for all the kiddos who tie their self-worth to their ability to follow installation instructions.
Just curious does anyone actually care about what distro people use or more just a meme?
In real life not at all, online though it ranges from friendiy banter to elitist peeps bickering about package managers, those guys can be ignored.
There are a not insignificant number of people in the Linux community who feel that the more user friendly focused distros are for “beginners” and the distros that less so are for “experts” and there is a lot of elitism and gatekeeping that goes along with that sentiment. In reality they’re all running the Linux kernel so they’re all equally valid options. Use what works best for you and ignore the chuds who try to tell you otherwise.
The only time I’ve encountered people that care a little too much about what distro is being used, is right after having transitioned to Linux; the sheer liberating potential of the thing can make you lose your head.
I’ve come across a lot of professional bias about Linux distros, but that’s usually due to real-world experience with tough or bad projects. Some times, decisions are made that make a given distro the villain or even the hero of the story. In the end, you’ll hear a lot of praise and hate, but context absolutely matters.
There’s also the very natural tendency to seek external validation for your actions/decisions. But some people just can’t self-actualize in a way that’s healthy. Sprinkle a little personal insecurity into the mix and presto: “someone is getting on great with that other Linux I don’t use, so Imma get big mad.”
Definetely a meme at least among my friends and coworkers. Just a friendly banter akin to prefering console vs pc or supporting one sports team rather than the other
The one that does what I need it to do on the device I’m running it on. I’ve currently got four different Linux distros on x86 PCs around my house at this moment.
ChromeOS
Fedora Workstation 40.
On windows until last year, after trying 11 on my T440s which made it unbearably slow so had to start over but instead of going back to 10 tried a bunch of distros.
Fedora stuck, mainly because of gnome vanilla (I really like the paradigm, don’t care about deep personalisation) and how everything just worked great.
Fight me?
Nah, Fedora is a valid choice, just like Ubuntu is. Both are great if you don’t care that much about personalization and just want a solid distro to get work done.
Fedora is pretty much the new Ubuntu more or less. Ubuntu has gone so far downhill that I can’t recommend it to anyone and that’s been the case for quite a while.
