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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Beginner Linux Guides (lemm.ee)

submitted 5 months ago by pineapplelover@lemm.ee to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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Are there any good resources for helping someone getting into Linux? One of my friends I never thought would get into Linux is asking me for help. He specifically is an advanced Windows power user. I also had someone who was a complete noob, even to Windows.

For the noob, I suggested LMDE and Kubuntu and they've been having some issues installing LMDE.

For the power user, I suggested the easy distros such as lmde, kubuntu, nobara but also told them if they wanted to jump into the deep end, arch is cool.

However, my suggestions don't even cover DEs, WMs or what they even are. I just wish there was a good guide out there. I think that's the biggest hurdle, so many options and not knowing what to pick.

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[–] boredsquirrel 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

All guides are different. There are tons of parallel efforts.

I would in general avoid

opinionated upstream (Ubuntu)
too outdated packages (everything Debian, when not using Flatpaks)
pretty unstable (Arch, Fedora Rawhide, Debian unstable/testing)

I tried a lot of distros, wanted to use KDE which was pretty bad until Plasma 6 to be honest. So always hopped and stayed with the distro where "just KDE breaks". Fedora Kinoite.

The distro upgrades are automatic and either fail or are not applied (atomic). The distro is premade and does not need changes, the base is as minimal as reasonably possible (even core apps are Flatpaks, to separate them from the base system).

But you can install some RPM packages, the exact same that you could install on other Fedora, external repos, COPR etc. The moment you install a single one, updates will take longer. I layer Librewolf, virt-manager and more without issues, and updates are in the background.

As the system is so modular, uBlue came to life. They ship base images but also highly opinionated ones. I always used kinoite-main, which is just the Fedora base with minimal changes and especially included restricted codecs. Currently trying Aurora, which has more fancy stuff. Bazzite is the one you can use for possibly the best Gaming experience on Linux, Chris Titus made a video about that.

Bazzite is pretty similar to Nobara I think, with the difference that they dont disable SELinux (lol) and use the way more stable rpm-ostree, so they will simply not break.

You also always have an entire snapshot when updating, not just a kernel. So you can always reset to the past version.

You can make a manual snapshot of a specific version, also before a version upgrade etc. These stay there forever until you remove them again.

The interface is easy but there is no GUI yet. Wouldnt be that hard to do, I think that would be a cool Qt/Kirigami project.

And if you still have strange bugs, you can reset, this means all the custom changes (installs, uninstalls, ...) will be removed and you get the current Fedora base install without modifications.

This is simply unique, as this is otherwise only possible with a reinstall. The moment you start modifying a "traditional" distros base, you are pretty irreversibly different from upstream.

Its pretty scary, and with Atomic Fedora I basically dont plan on reinstalling ever again.