danger/u/
This thread is permanently archived
linux

| as a new guy who wants to get into it, what are some linux resources to learn?


| >>683863
There's plenty of reading you can do OP but I recommend picking any Linux distribution that suits you and find the wiki for said distribution.


| You can also use information from another distribution's wiki (Linux is not mutually exclusive) for troubleshooting purposes. Most of the time there'll only be minor differences in what you should do and don't.


| I'd personally recommend getting more comfortable with the command line and learning some basic *nix commands, lots of people are scared of it but it's really not that scary


| >>683868 alright, I'll try it out. thanks for the help


| From my experience, the best way to learn how it works is to poke around and customize it. Pick a program from /bin and figure out what it does (usually just 'man $prog'), that will tet you familiar with the tools you have. Take a look at r/unixp*rn on Reddit and try to customize your system, that helps with learning how the desktop functions. You might break something, so look into backup systems to learn what files do what.

Just poke around and have fun!


| >>684443
i'm usually an anti-customization kind of guy, i like almost default everything. but learning how to use programs is very useful! you don't need to actually memorize the options, just try to remember what can you do with it. if you combine this with some easy shell scripting, you'll be able to automate tasks and save a lot of time! stay motivated! ^_^


| >>683863
In many cases using -h and/or --help switches or checking the manpage of a program is a very useful source of information on how a program works.


| >>685112
yep, but sometimes man pages can be a bit overwhelming. it's okay to look for articles or tutorials on the internet too. but you will have to face the man sooner or later.


| alright, op again. I've narrowed down distro choice to Ubuntu or mint, because they seem like easy transitions, or arch, because I like the idea of installing everything myself, even if it's a hard transition. any advice?


| Checkout Peppermint. It's pretty light with lxde, based on Ubuntu/Debian. That stopped my "distrohopping" and I really like it since it's more practical also just works out of the box.

But if you like to setup everything from scratch yourself then you might wanna consider Debian or Arch.


| >>685216
Arch will teach you the basic fundamentals of a Linux system (and the many components a 'distro' has). Other options if you like this sort of installation is Void, Debian, Gentoo, and Alpine (and there are more, of course).

Do note that if this is your first installation (for any distro mentioned above), I advice doing this in a virtual machine first. Once you're comfortable, jump ahead to bare-metal/real hardware.


| >>685290
+1 for VM advice


| Mint would to be a very good choice to start getting to know the software ecosystems and such,and from there you can tinker other distros on VMs

Also, don't fall for distros such as Arch. They are designed for advanced users and delegate all the responsibility on breaking the system down to them (for example, software is updated to the latest release without any regards of bugs, it requires manual interventions on many updates which most of the people ignore...), they aren't toys


| >>685325
I'd like to correct the 'many updates' — most updates that require intervention tends to be published in Arch Linux News. You are not wrong that Arch doesn't lend you that many hands, but it isn't as ruthless as, say, Gentoo.

This is anecdotal but my system runs Arch and I haven't been experiencing any package breakage (AUR not included) for quite a long time now.

I do agree that Arch should first be experienced in a VM though.


| >>5bce12 do AUR packages break often?


| >>685375
They're community-supported packages. How often they break depends on the developers of the package and the maintainers' attentiveness.

Don't let this detract you from AUR though. Unless you fiddle too much with the build script and the package you're building isn't abandoned, you'll most likely end up with a working package.

That said, from my experience, they rarely break too. If they do, they're often things like DEs, rarely smaller packages.


| btw, I don't use arch. sorry

Total number of posts: 18, last modified on: Fri Jan 1 00:00:00 1596544816

This thread is permanently archived