• starman2112@sh.itjust.works
    1·
    4 months ago

    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

    • HStone32@lemmy.world
      2·
      4 months ago

      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.

    • Allero@lemmy.today
      1·
      4 months ago

      Literally the most suggested newbie distro, so you’re probably fine :)

      Like, ideologically I may mention it’s Ubuntu-based so it sucks, but from end user perspective, it’s alright.

      Doubling down on literacy, Linux guides are either “here’s how to do that absolutely basic thing” or “using veheydgvrl for quantumschropping the badumbliss”. To me, Mental Outlaw produced quite some simple guides (warning: most vids are rants so you’ll have to search for actual guides), Veronica Explains might be the fun option and not bloated with anything but tech, and just searching for solutions to whatever your issue is before you grasp how it works.

      • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        4 months ago

        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

        • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world
          01·
          4 months ago

          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. PATH is 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 your PATH to include other places.

    • Dharma Curious (he/him)@slrpnk.net
      1·
      4 months ago

      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

    • LordPassionFruit@lemm.ee
      1·
      4 months ago

      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.

  • TheKracken@lemmy.world
    1·
    4 months ago

    Just setup Mint last night and have been troubleshooting how to get everything to work. So far I’m liking it. Last thing I setup was Lutris for gaming so that’s nice.

        • baguettefish@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          0·
          4 months ago

          I’m pretty sure the question was more about linux mint (ubuntu/default) vs. linux mint debian edition, as those can confidently be called different distros. Don’t worry about it though, the issues with ubuntu are actually very small, they’re just infinitely magnified on the internet by people who care a lot about the smallest things. There are also many advantages to using ubuntu or an ubuntu derivative. Also this question can be interpreted very humorously, so maybe do that if you like.

          • TheKracken@lemmy.world
            0·
            4 months ago

            Ah I assume Ubuntu based since I just downloaded the latest from the mint website. Still learning about Linux so not 100% sure.

            • baguettefish@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
              0·
              4 months ago

              If you just went with the most prominent and easily accessible download button it’ll probably be ubuntu, but as i said, despite what some might say that’s not necessarily a bad thing

    • Lettuce eat lettuce@lemmy.ml
      1·
      4 months ago

      I love Mint, it has become my workhorse distro. I use LMDE on my personal business laptop. I switched my parents from Windows 10 to Mint earlier this year, and it’s been great on their very old and low power desktop.

      Cinnamon is not the prettiest or slickest DE, but damn if it ain’t the most stable DE I’ve used.

      I’m a KDE fanboi myself, but when I spin up a machine that I need to just work in a super dependable way and is no muss, no fuss, I usually choose Mint with Cinnamon.

  • atmur@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    4 months ago

    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.

    • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      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?

    • Aceticon@lemmy.world
      2·
      4 months ago

      It’s wonderful how the expression “humble Arch Linux user” manages to pack a contradiction in a mere 4 words.

  • Skyline969@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    4 months ago

    Linux Mint. Cinnamon. With a Windows Vista theme. It confuses and/or irritates everyone who sees it.

    • TheTechnician27@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      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.

      • Communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        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.

        • Crismus@lemmy.world
          0·
          4 months ago

          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.

          • Communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyzEnglish
            0·
            4 months ago

            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.

  • Allero@lemmy.today
    0·
    4 months ago

    Ooookay, this will get controversial.

    Proud Manjaro/Debian user!

    • Ubuntu and derivatives suck because of Canonical and their practices
    • Fedora sucks because of Red Hat
    • OpenSUSE sucks because RPM (why?!) and still SUSE (but they’re the best of the three)
    • Rest is exotic and obscure

    So we end up with Arch and Debian. Debian 12 is good enough as is, and runs on a work laptop where I don’t care about anything but stability. Arch is respectable and great, but requires excessive maintenance to work properly. Among its derivatives, Endeavour is just a nicer archinstall (so, why?), Garuda is cool but unstable and too gamer’y, Manjaro is a bit problematic at times but generally the safest bet when it comes to Arch. So, when it comes to my main PC doubling as a gaming rig, this is a no-brainer.