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New to Linux, have a few questions (pawb.social)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by Nokinori@pawb.social to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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I currently use Windows 10 and I’d like to try out Linux. My plan is to set up a dual boot with OpenSUSE tumbleweed and KDE Plasma. I’ve read so many different opinions about choosing a distro, compatibility with gaming and Nvidia drivers, and personal issues with the ethos of different companies like Canonical. I value privacy and I’d rather avoid a Linux distro that’s implementing something like ads or telemetry…if that’s even a thing that’s happening?

As a complete beginner, what sort of advice would you all have for me? Should I avoid OpenSUSE or KDE Plasma for some reason? Are there any ‘10 things to do first when installing Linux for the first time’ recommendations?

Despite all the ‘beginner friendly’ guides and tutorials around, I still feel a little lost and like I’m going into this blind.

EDIT: Thanks to everyone who's offered advice, I really appreciate all the help and the patience with my dumb questions! There's a lot to look through and it's been a busy day for me, but I'll get back to reading through everything and replying as soon as I can!

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[–] Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee 31 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

My big question would be why are you starting with a dual boot? I would recommend trying each one with a liveUSB or in a virtual machine and simply do a single boot with the one you like better. There’s likely little need for you to actually maintain two distros unless you have a very niche use case that one distro can’t solve.

My advice would be to just relax and realize that the underlying OS is 90% the same regardless of what distro you choose. All the discussion you see on different distros, package managers, snaps, wayland, etc. are all the other 10%. It really doesn’t matter what distro you start on as long as it’s a general purpose distro (both of the ones in your OP are): once you learn the first 90% of linux, you’ll develop your own tastes, and then you’ll be able to decide on the remaining 10%.

[–] CsXGF8uzUAOh6fqV@lemmy.world 15 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I think he wants to dual boot tumbleweed and windows, not two linux distros.

[–] Nokinori@pawb.social 8 points 10 months ago (7 children)

Yeah. I probably should have been more clear about that.

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[–] Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago

Ah, that makes way more sense.

[–] Quazatron@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is the sensible thing to do. Try a bunch of distros using either USB or as Virtual Machines.

It'll save you a lot of heartache when you eventually kill the bootloader, the display driver or both (and you will, it is part or the learning process).

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[–] Nokinori@pawb.social 4 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I want to maintain my Windows 10 install for now as a sort of fallback. I have a lot of random software installed for my university classes, and I don’t know about all the compatibility issues I might face with those. And letting it sit there in the background in case I need it for something feels safer than jumping head first into a new OS.

Trying out liveUSB or VM stuff seemed like it would be an extra hurdle in transitioning to Linux. Like, I want to get settled in and actually use it as a daily thing, not just browse the internet a bit here and there. If I don’t like the distro I choose, I can always just install another one, right?

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 2 points 10 months ago

A live USB would let you play around in a desktop environment for a bit to see if you like it before jumping in the deep end with it. But if you've already tried out KDE plasma and know you'll like it, then you're probably fine. I agree that you won't become familiar with a full distro without data persistence and repeated use.

Maybe at least live boot gnome if you haven't tried that one yet. Gnome and KDE are the most fully featured desktop environments, so they're natural choices for users coming from win/mac.

Yeah, you can always install another, but if you are going to do that every day or two before settling on one, maybe consider installing virtual box and trying out the distros like that first. Of course, if you're in a VM, it can be a challenge to get proper hardware acceleration if you're going to try out gaming.

At the end of the day, I think dual booting is a good idea, as long as you only use windows when it's your only option. That's what I do. It's easy enough to reboot if I need to play a game or use a windows specific app. More consistent than dealing with QEMU or something.

[–] Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Oh, my misunderstanding, I thought you wanted to dual boot OpenSuse and KDE Plasma. Dual booting Windows 10 and one of those makes way more sense, especially if you have niche university software that was probably written 20 years ago for Windows XP service pack 2, is already barely compatible with Windows 10, and almost certainly never had a linux version. You definitely don’t want to gamble on abandoning Windows completely until after you graduate.

And yes, once you get comfortable installing a distro, it gets pretty easy to just install a new one.

[–] WildlyCanadian@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Plasma is the desktop environment he wants on Tumbleweed. Neon is the KDE distro. I thought it was pretty clear he wanted to dual boot Windows tbh

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[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 13 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

It's a bit of an unpopular opinion, but if you pick a mainstream distro there isn't a lot of difference between them. Especially to somebody who is new to linux.

With most any distro you can use KDE, gnome and other desktop environments. You can pick which one you want to use when you login. So don't think you're tying yourself to KDE if you install kubuntu or something.

If you want an easy way to switch to a new distro make sure you create a separate partition for /home. Then if/when you want to install something new you can have it overwrite everything except your home directory. So all your steam configs and games will be left untouched (for example). Alternatively just backup /home somewhere and restore as you need.

[–] Nokinori@pawb.social 1 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Is a home directory similar to the users folder in windows, or like the program files folder? Is it ‘everything but the OS’? I’m still trying to get a grasp on how the OS operates conceptually.

[–] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah - the home directory in Linux pre-dates the windows Users directory by a long time. You'll see the multi-user nature of your OS exposed much more in Linux than you will in Windows.

Every user will have a /home/username directory on Linux (often referenced by "~" or by the environment variable "$HOME"). By default this is the only directory that user will have any permissions to create things (with some exceptions like /tmp which is used for temporary file creation - but nothing long-term). So all of your configuration, user-created files, etc. will be created there.

Configurations are often stored in 'dot-files' or in directories that begin with a period. These are "hidden" by default with most file-browsing tools (it's just a tradition - there's nothing otherwise special about files or directories that begin with a period). So you'll have a .bashrc which is the script that runs when you start a bash shell for example. Or .local which is where you will find a lot of application configurations these days.

So if you copy /home/username somewhere you will copy all of your configurations.

Some applications will install there as well. Steam, for example, will install your programs under $HOME/.steam.

Things you install "system-wide" will be installed to /usr/bin or /bin. This will typically be things that you use a package manager to install. So the steam application may be /usr/bin/steam but then all of its configurations, installed apps, etc. go in your home dir.

If you're curious where a command lives you can use which cmd or type cmd from the command-line and it will show you (something I often wish Windows had).

NOTE: There are exceptions to everything I've said above. But those are the "general" guidelines. In short - if you installed it without needing root permissions it's likely somewhere in $HOME.

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[–] WildlyCanadian@lemmy.ca 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Essentially, yeah. Most programs will install to your root directory, but all your personal configs and personal files will be in your home directory.

What I'd personally recommend is using Timeshift to automatically keep backups if your home directory on a separate partition, then if you want to switch distros or if you need to reinstall for whatever reason you can use Timeshift to restore your home directory pretty easily, as long as your new install uses the same file system.

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[–] Rustmilian@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The home directory is like the Windows users directory, yes.
In the shell/terminal it's represented by ~ or $HOME, it's path is likely /home/$USER/
First / = Root
$USER = current user account you're using.

You should check out this Arch Wiki page & this Arch man page.
Don't worry it's pretty distro agnostic.

[–] Ibaudia@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

For Nvidia I would recommend Pop!_OS since it makes things really easy. Either that or Debian with KDE. More mainstream = more users = better support.

[–] Molten_Moron@lemmings.world 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Linux Mint works really well with Nvidia, too!

[–] Nokinori@pawb.social 4 points 10 months ago

I keep hearing good things about both of those. They're the first two distros on my list to try out after OpenSUSE.

[–] Chewy7324@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is an awesome distro with up to date packages. KDE is also a great choice, especially with Plasma 6.0 around the corner.

I wouldn't worry too much about Nvidia drivers, just follow OpenSUSE's guide [1]. The remaining issues of Nvidia with KDE Wayland are getting fixed over the coming months.

Edit: OpenSUSE can't ship some codecs by default for legal reasons (like RedHat, Fedora), but makes it simple to enable them (optionally through graphical YaST) [2].

[1] https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:NVIDIA_drivers

[2] https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Installing_codecs_from_Packman_repositories

[–] Nokinori@pawb.social 1 points 10 months ago

That makes sense, thanks!

[–] netchami@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I’d rather avoid a Linux distro that’s implementing something like ads or telemetry…if that’s even a thing that’s happening?

Fedora has some telemetry, but as far as I know, you can turn it off during the installation. Some desktop environments like KDE Plasma also have options for telemetry but it's disabled by default. If you want it, you manually have to enable it in the settings.

Should I avoid OpenSUSE

Some software might not be available on openSUSE

or KDE Plasma

Not really, Plasma has a shitload of features and customization options, if many options tend to overwhelm you, you might be better of with a different desktop environment, if you are fine with customization options, Plasma is great for you.

Are there any ‘10 things to do first when installing Linux for the first time’ recommendations?

Since you said that you want to install openSUSE, I recommend this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ajVqJ1nl9bM

[–] Nokinori@pawb.social 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Why would some software not be available on OpenSUSE? Would it be available on other distros due to a different way they handle packages, or do you mean in comparison to Windows?

[–] netchami@sh.itjust.works 2 points 10 months ago (3 children)

openSUSE is rather small, not everything is packaged for it. Arch is the best in terms of software availability, thanks to the AUR.

The only distro that even comes close is NixOS, but I really wouldn't recommend it for beginners. You can explore it in a VM though or maybe at some point actually try it out. It's very very different than other distros though.

[–] d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Nix (Nixpkgs) actually exceeds the AUR in the number of packages, according to this page.

And the nice thing about it is that you don't even have to be on NixOS to use it - in fact, NixOS came much later. Nix started out as a distro-independent package manager, and can still be used that way, because Nix packages do not interfere with your system's packages.

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[+] corrupts_absolutely@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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[–] Nokinori@pawb.social 1 points 10 months ago (5 children)

I’m a student, and I play games. So mostly I’m doing MS Office and Steam, but I’ve got a lot of random niche stuff I do too. Like I’m using Unity to develop a HoloLens app for a research lab, and I just use VSCode as my IDE. I use Bitwig Studio for audio production, Blender, Freetube, and some proprietary software from my University.

I guess I’m just wondering about compatibility issues I might face, and how to approach those. Are there just some programs that I won’t be able to use on Linux? I’ve heard about Wine, but it all feels conceptual. Like you ‘use’ wine to run windows programs but what does that mean? Do I run it like a VM? But it’s not an emulator?

I’m used to going to the internet, finding an .exe, and installing programs. But Linux has a package manager that you should do that through instead? But I’ve also seen a bunch of download links for Linux software online, so is there a difference in downloading something from the internet and installing a ‘Linux’ version of it, or installing that through a package manager?

Sorry I’m all over the place, i think my brain is a little scattered trying to figure everything out at once haha

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 2 points 10 months ago

No worries, it's a lot of details to take in having never been part of it. The thing about the open source world is that there's no central authority figure to say "this is what we're doing, stop doing that other stuff". So instead, anyone can do anything without consideration for what else is out there.

So yeah, package managers are one way to install software, there are many different package managers out there, and virtually every distro ships with the one that fits their design philosophy best. Package managers tend to point to a set of repositories (servers full of packages) that are managed by your distro maintainers. Depending on the package manager, a "package" may be a pre-built binary, or it might just reference some source code and scripts to build it. Either way, the purpose is to make it easy to install packages that someone has theoretically taken a look at and given a thumbs up to, indicating that it should work on your distro, in combination with the other packages in the repo (theoretically).

But not every single binary out there has been inspected by every distro maintainer. There are often licenses that prevent them from re-hosting proprietary binaries on their servers, and even if the license is permissive, it's not uncommon for maintainers to disallow packages that aren't open source. So ex. Discord has a Linux binary you can download and use, but it's not commonly served from a package manager.

"Wine Is Not an Emulator" because it's not emulating hardware. At the end of the day, windows and Linux are both running on your x86-64 CPU. In theory you should be able to point the Program Counter at the first instruction in a binary, and the CPU won't care which OS it's running on....until it tries to make a system call, or jump to a windows-specific dll. Wine basically tries to create an environment so that when a binary tries to do something that is normally only offered by the windows runtimes, there is code loaded to do what it expects.

These days, I recommend trying out Bottles to run arbitrary windows apps. It's user-friendly, you create "containers" for specific windows apps, and it uses wine under the hood.

And then you have things like "flatpack" which are kind of like package managers where the package is a bottle/container, but the software it runs could be for any platform (Linux or windows). There are pros and cons to this (pros usually being stability, cons usually relating to the size of the containers on disk).

There are people who are adamantly for/against each thing, which is why distros exist in the first place. That's just how the open source world works. I recommend finding something that works for you and not feeling obligated to worry about the 10 other ways people have gotten it working.

Good luck!

[–] d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

None of the comments here explain how WINE works, so allow me to elaborate a bit.

WINE is like a translator or a compatibility layer. When a Windows program tries to perform a function that would normally require Windows, WINE steps in and translates that request into something the Linux system can understand and process.

As you may know, Windows programs work by making API calls (eg using Win32 APIs) to operate and perform basic tasks. WINE takes these API calls and translates them to their Linux equivalents (POSIX calls, to be specific, which means Wine can run on several Unix-like systems). This way, when a program asks to say, open a file, or display something on the screen, WINE converts these requests into a form that Linux can execute.

WINE's approach is about providing compatibility for user-level applications rather than replicating the internal workings of the Windows kernel. It includes various libraries and components that mimic the behavior of those in Windows. This helps in executing the Windows applications as if they are running in their native environment.

The core of it is NTDLL. NTDLL.dll is a core Windows library that provides low-level system functions to interact with the Windows NT kernel. In WINE, ntdll.dll is adapted to work with the Linux kernel instead.
Then you have the Win32 API libraries, providing the basic APIs that Windows applications use for functions like window management, text rendering, and system calls. Examples include user32.dll (for user-interface functions), gdi32.dll (for graphics device interface functions), and kernel32.dll (for basic system functions).
Shell32.dll for handling Windows Shell API functions related to file operations and the user interface.
DirectX Support, for running games and multimedia applications. WINE implements parts of DirectX, like Direct3D for 3D graphics, DirectDraw for 2D graphics, and DirectSound for sound processing. Note that WINE's implementation converse Direct3D calls to OpenGL, whereas there are community projects like DXVK and VKD3D which translates these calls to Vulkan.
Finally there's a Registry Implementation, so that applications that need to read or write to the registry can function correctly.

Of course, there's a LOT more to it, the above is just an example of some key components. Basically Wine has reimplemented (coded from scratch) various libraries and executables that, on the outside, look like standard Windows dlls/exes, but internally they use POSIX APIs to talk to the Linux kernel and other POSIX components. This, along with the Syscall translations, bridges the gap between Windows programs and Linux.

Now naturally, this is neither a perfect, nor a complete implementation of Windows APIs; plus there are some things which Wine will never implement (such as ntoskrnl.exe), so not every program will work as expected - so check out the Wine AppDB for compatibility reports with various Windows apps.

[–] WildlyCanadian@lemmy.ca 1 points 10 months ago

Bitwig and Blender work great on Linux, as well as most games. MS Office and the proprietary apps will need a separate Windows install. Wine is a compatibility layer that essentially translates the Windows files into something that your Linux OS can use. It works great for some things, like games, but isnt recommended/doesn't work for others, like Office or Adobe suite. Personally I'd recommend finding the alternatives for the programs you need on Windows and trying them out, while keeping the original programs in your Windows install. You can get used to the workflow of the new programs and decide if switching is a viable thing for you. And if not, hey now you're comfortable with another set of programs just in case you need them in the future.

[–] callyral@pawb.social 1 points 10 months ago

so is there a difference in downloading something from the internet and installing a ‘Linux’ version of it, or installing that through a package manager?

Installing with a package manager is easier, since it handles stuff for you. You'll usually only download software from your browser if it's not available in your distro's package manager.

Package managers may have multiple repositories, these are like lists of packages, and may differ from distro to distro.

A good analogy is thinking of a package repo (short for repository) as a library, and the package manager a librarian helping you search for a book.

‘use’ wine to run windows programs but what does that mean? Do I run it like a VM? But it’s not an emulator?

It's a compatibility layer, to put it simply (since I'm not a WINE expert) it converts Windows stuff to Linux stuff, instead of straight up running a Windows VM.

[–] kubica@kbin.social 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I'm also a beginner and I noticed that debian let me install a lot of possible desktops. So I installed all of them, and I can switch on the password screen which one to open. I'm trying some stuff this way.

[–] the_postminimalist@sh.itjust.works 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Regardless of the distro, you can install as many desktops you want. It doesn't have to be during the OS's installation screen.

[–] kubica@kbin.social 1 points 10 months ago

I found this easier because I messed an earlier installation trying to change desktops. (I don't remember the distro.)

[–] Chewy7324@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

If you notice issues with Wayland screen sharing or flatpak file manager not opening, try uninstalling Gnome/KDE. The xdg-desktop-portals for different desktops sometimes don't work correctly while concurrently installed. If you don't notice issues, it should work fine.

[–] kubica@kbin.social 1 points 10 months ago

Thanks I'll try to keep it in mind if something weird happens.

[–] S410@kbin.social 3 points 10 months ago

OpenSUSE + KDE is a really solid choice, I'd say.

The most important Linux advice I have is this: Linux isn't Windows. Don't expect things to works the same.
Don't try too hard to re-configure things that don't match the way things are on Windows. If there isn't an easy way to get a certain behavior, there's probably a reason for it.

[–] Rustmilian@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

If you run into any issues or if you're not sure how to do something, feel free to ask.
I'll do my best to point you in the right direction.

[–] Nokinori@pawb.social 2 points 10 months ago

Thank you! I’d welcome advice on any of the other replies I’ve made so far, and if I have any more specific questions I’ll give you a shout!

[–] hersh@literature.cafe 2 points 10 months ago

I used to run Tumbleweed with KDE on my Nvidia system. I found the rolling release structure of Tumbleweed to cause extra work for me, because kernel updates came frequently and occasionally broke the Nvidia drivers. As a workaround, I ended up pinning my kernel to an old version.

Nvidia drivers have been at least a little troublesome on every distro I've used, particularly with the additional CUDA libraries.

One nice thing about Suse is that it uses BTRFS by default, and you can use snapper to revert your whole system if something goes wrong. So if Nvidia shits the the bed after an update, it's easy to roll back. Most distros default to ext4 and do not have snapshot support by default, which feels like living in the stone age to me after using Suse and BTRFS.

Of course you CAN set up BTRFS and snapshots in any distro, but that's a lot to ask for a beginner with Linux. I strongly recommend choosing a distro that does that for you, like Suse.

[–] ObsidianBreaks@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If you have a spare solid state drive or a portable HDD (most USB sticks are a bit too slow for a proper install), maybe install a Linux distribution onto that portable device, then you can just boot from that, then you only need to boot switch in Bios to Windows when you need to use it again. This has the advantage of you not needing to setup a complicated dual boot setup. When you are settled in with Linux, open your drive where Windows is located from Linux, copy your files over (don't forget your bookmarks and saved passwords) and then you can clone your linux install from your portable drive over your old Windows install using a tool such as dd.

[–] Nokinori@pawb.social 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for the advice. I plan on adding another internal SSD and installing Linux on that. I should have been more specific in my original post.

You’re saying I can access the filesystem on my windows drive from Linux? So I could directly copy files back and forth? I thought I’d have to copy them onto an external drive, reboot, and then copy to the Linux drive.

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[–] Ultimatenab@beehaw.org 1 points 9 months ago

After contemplating for 3-4 years about switching my main rig to Linux, I did it on Friday just gone.

Note for the below, I have a full AMD system.

I went with Garuda Dragonized distro as it is gaming focused and has all the game related stuff included.
took me less than 30mins going from gaming on Win11 to Linux, but I did the research before.
there are a few tweaks if you use Steam but you have Lutris to help you.
of the 35 ish games installed, all of them work without issues, but they need updating once you enable compatibility to Proton.
the default theme is too flashy but you can select to bring it down a few notches

Technical

if you have secondary SSD or HDD, dedicated to games or files like I did, it is advisable to have them backed up to an external drive as you will need to re-partition them from NTFS to use them properly in Linux
with Garuda Dragonized Gaming, all drivers are installed but follow the Wizard at the beginning and check all that apply to you. It will save you time.

Good luck and looking forward to having you on Linux!

[–] sailingbythelee@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

I can see why you want to dual boot, given your use case. For gaming and MS office, Linux is not better than Windows. That said, Linux is fun to learn and you can experiment and gradually move everything over from Windows.

If you want the absolute easiest transition from Windows, I think Linux Mint Cinnamon is the best. It looks like Windows out of the box and is organized similarly. Its like going to a familiar grocery store where you know where to find the things you need. It is stable, there are rarely any weird conflicts or updates that break the system, and it comes with all the codecs you'll need for media. In terms of installing new software, the software "store" is so simple, it makes installing software much like installing apps on Android (without all the bullshit marketing, of course). Shit just works. Steam, spotify, etc. are right there and install flawlessly. Many Steam games are native Linux and you'll be able to install the Linux version of any game you own. For Windows-only games, you can gradually experiment with Wine, etc. and see how that works for you.

MS Office is obviously the elephant in the room, but office apps are pretty standardized at this point. You can use MS 365 online apps. Or, it is an easy transition from Word, Excel and Powerpoint to LibreOffice. Much more intuitive than using Google apps, for example. Write a few papers in LibreOffice and just save in Word format for submission (although most profs will accept Open Document Format as well, which is also supported by MS Office). Double-check formatting in Windows or the online Office 365 apps if you are worried. It is pretty easy to get used to if you use Office like most people do.

But don't take my word for it. Make a bootable live usb and see for yourself. https://linuxmint-installation-guide.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

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