Change to Linux Os?!

Discussion in 'all things UNIX' started by pb1, Jul 31, 2020.

  1. pb1

    pb1 Registered Member

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    What would be an easy dist?

    I have to machines, one for testing and one for daily use. I think i will install it on the test d.o and play with it now and then during a couple of weeks just too learn and get the feel and hang of it.

    I am not totally shure that i will stay with Linux because i am one of thoose guys who secretly like all the troublesome messing with Windows. What am i going to do without it ;). But i want to try Linux out just to give it a chance and also to see what its all about and let my experience decide. Go over to it, run dual or stay with Windows.
     
  2. Gringo95

    Gringo95 Registered Member

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    Exactly. So go ask a Windows users with zero Linux experience what this means to them and then maybe you'll understand that recommending something with a unique boot system and uncommon package management is not the best way to go. Try also a few more funny emoys because the last lot had no effect.
     
  3. Gringo95

    Gringo95 Registered Member

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  4. Gringo95

    Gringo95 Registered Member

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    I need this stuff to work. If it doesn’t I lose clients and bread does not come into house, get onto table and then into mouth.

    Two of my favorites because they do work and allow bread to arrive consistently are ROSA and Neptune. Unfortunately because of the general economic impact of Covid-19 felt by so many, Rosalab are struggling to release their 2019 upgrade so the base system remains at 2016. For many reasons this is not as bad as it might seem especially for average home users and it’s still being updated but knowing human nature for what it is I can understand why folks might be reluctant to use it. There is an ‘unofficial’ release being worked on via their forum which may or may not bear fruit. MX, Manjaro and others have gone down this route with much success (apart from anything Deepin related) so maybe ROSA is not completely dead yet, or the official distro might enjoy a revival once the economics settle out.

    ROSA incidentally still supports KDE4 including the current 11.1 (23rd April 2020) so if anyone misses SuperKaramba and other the stuff that went with this desktop, grab an ISO and enjoy the ride back in time (while it lasts).

    http://wiki.rosalab.ru/en/index.php/ROSA_Release
    https://neptuneos.com/en/start-page.html

    You can go on and on with this however and the list of everyone's favorites would easily fill several pages here. As shmu26 says, just pick one and try it.
     
  5. patriki

    patriki Guest

    There is no distro user friendly with Linux, there is a time when we seriously need to understand and learn an OS. Solus is one of the simplest, no external ppa, everything is gathered in one echo system.

    As I said before, Solus must be the only system installed on a PC. And then you also have to experiment by yourself instead of believing a test that from the beginning was doomed to fail.
     
  6. shmu26

    shmu26 Registered Member

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    Mint Cinnamon is not overly challenging and the forum has your back. And it is Ubuntu-based. This is good because Ubuntu itself is Debian-based. That means you can take your experience along with you to distros such as MX or Kubuntu or many many others. The basics will always be the same.

    Don't worry about loosing your opportunity to mess around with the OS. If you enjoy that sort of thing, you will absolutely love Linux and will become addicted to it.
     
  7. wat0114

    wat0114 Registered Member

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    Good luck if you test run Linux. You are likely going to find more "troublesome messing" with Linux than you ever have with Windows. If you find it interesting and intriguing, and you have the time and patience to learn it, you may like it and even switch to Linux. In my case I use both Linux and Windows in near equal parts. I've tried really, really hard to leave Windows, but i just can't.
     
  8. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    patriki,

    Solus Plasma doesn't support Secure Boot so I lost interest.

    I did try to install it (Secure Boot disabled) but it's the only Linux OS I've tried that doesn't see the Linux partition I created to install into.
     
  9. Gringo95

    Gringo95 Registered Member

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    In a world grossly over populated with both distros and desktop environments I can never understand why folks keep on reinventing the wheel, the Solus installer being one example.

    Probably the best or worst example is Nitrux. First they give everyone a method for ‘deployment’ instead of a standard installation which few were able to understand including me. For good measure they included the Index file manager and a desktop called Nomad that no one wanted either. Then because their ego driven baby was so special they went commercial with only the testing version being available for free. When that didn’t work either out comes Calamares to enable proper installations and it becomes free for everyone.

    DistroWatch are still describing Nitrux as a commercial distribution using the Nomad desktop. Both descriptions are months out of date since it now uses the NX-desktop.
     
  10. pb1

    pb1 Registered Member

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    Well guys, i`ve been looking around to find an alternative to Spotify, Clementine seems to popular.

    The reason for sticking to Spotify is that is has such a large catalog, way over 20 mill. Hard to beat. Another reason is that they have something called "Discover weekly" that comes once a week and is suggestions about music based on what i have listened to before. Thru that feature i have discover a lot of fine music that i otherwise wouldn`t have known about.

    If someone knows about something that has similar, or even better features, i am all ears.
     
  11. pb1

    pb1 Registered Member

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    Ok, yeah, maybe it is a good idè to start with Mint Cinnamon and go further from there. Is this the forum you mean: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewforum.php?f=208

    Even if the MX KDE Beta sounded very interesting.

    What is it that is so complex with Linux that makes you all in the thread say one should start with something simple. Is it really more difficult to figure out or handle than Windows? I thought it was the other way around.

    "Love to mess around" you say, give some examples of what you mean.
     
  12. Krusty

    Krusty Registered Member

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    For someone unqualified to answer, for me, who has limited needs from my Linux machines, it really isn't that difficult. The hard part / learning comes in when you need to do something outside of GUIs. Thankfully, I haven't needed to go down that road and Linux is still just a toy for me. That said, I haven't really had to dig into Windows too far to get it to work as I need either.
     
  13. shmu26

    shmu26 Registered Member

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    Yes, that's the forum.

    I just listen to classical music, classical as in Bach and Mozart, so I am obviously the wrong person to talk music to...

    Don't believe the stupid propaganda that Windows has all the problems and bugs, while Linux has all the love and peace and free bliss. That's a lie. So what's the difference between them?
    If you just turn on your computer to surf the web, write a letter to your Mom, or watch a vid, then you will probably find both Windows and Linux to be no-brainers.
    If you want your printer to work right, you might be lucky and you might not. If it's Windows, the solution will probably be GUI. Go to device manager and find the device marked with an X, and reinstall the driver. If it's Linux, the solution will probably start with the word Sudo. In other words, you are at the terminal, typing (or more likely pasting) commands.
     
  14. shmu26

    shmu26 Registered Member

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    Just go ahead and try to set up a network in Linux, or repair boot problems, or figure out why the clock is showing the wrong hour, or why a program is unable to install (hint: unsatisfied dependencies).
    With some desktop environments, just pinning a shortcut to the taskbar or minimizing an open window might have you running to the forums.
     
  15. wat0114

    wat0114 Registered Member

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    Or getting your wireless network adapter to work.
     
  16. reasonablePrivacy

    reasonablePrivacy Registered Member

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    I customized boot process for my Debian Gnu/Linux and it involves some config files.
    I had problems with boot with Windows in the past that I couldn't fix. I tried install DVD and clicking things there. I tried bcdedit from there and other things and nothing really seemed to work, so I just reinstalled Windows. In other words for me fixing problems in Gnu/Linux involves some work and time, but I always can fix something that was working before. I don't have the same experience with Windows. In Windows I had to reinstall or roll-back to previous whole-OS backup several times.
     
  17. pb1

    pb1 Registered Member

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    I am not doing anything else then surfing the web and listening to music now and then, maybe, occasionally, streaming a movie. So i should be in the clear, right!?

    The reason, except curiosity, for trying Linux is that i have the idè that it is less troublesome when it comes to updates than Windows. Meaning that it just rolls on and on and are just functioning while Windows gets its montly, almost, hickups in the form of updates. Its a little bit tiresome with these direct or indirect problems that it causes. I want something more reliable to avoid all that work the beforementioned brings.
     
  18. shmu26

    shmu26 Registered Member

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    If you are an uncomplicated user, you are much less likely to run into issues.

    When installing the distro of your choice, pay attention to a question that might come up about installing 3rd-party drivers/codecs/whatever. Say "yes" if you don't want trouble. Say "no" if you are an open-source purist.

    If you are on a very reliable and well-maintained distro, the updates are extremely unlikely to cause you any issues. Ubuntu and Mint are very reliable, and probably Debian as well, others would know better than me.
    But on the MX forum and Manjaro forum you can sometimes see warnings about updates that messed up some people's systems. It's usually because of their GPU. And these distros I mentioned are much more reliable than some of the others. So, salvation from updating issues is not to be taken for granted on Linux.

    Another thing to think twice about is your peripherals. Windows has much better driver support for a wide range of hardware, old and new. On a relatively new laptop you might have driver issues on some distros with things like the wifi, for instance. Or with gaming mice and new-fangled devices. Or with my favorite source of grief: fax modems.
     
    Last edited: Aug 3, 2020
  19. shmu26

    shmu26 Registered Member

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    In short, a solid distro will not give you update grief, and also will not force you to restart your computer (although some updates won't finish their business until you restart).
    Enough said. Just jump in.
     
  20. Gringo95

    Gringo95 Registered Member

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    I’ve never had issues with wifi on anything with a built in card that wasn’t a museum piece. What I have encountered is wifi adapters that work perfectly with a live session but not after install or when trying to install if the distro doesn’t install directly from the live session aka BunsenLabs. A rare possibility with the mainstream distros though.

    Boot issues are fun but 99% of the time Super Grub2 on a pendrive will get you access to at least enable a search for the remedy.

    Timezones/locales can also be a problem especially if like me you need to install in English with a Portuguese Brazil keyboard. Again not likely to be an issue with mainstream distros.

    Unsatisfied dependencies too are rare unless you’re trying to install from a third party repository.

    The biggest and most time consuming issue I’ve ever enjoyed in my computing life were failed and/or broken Windows 7 updates.
     
  21. shmu26

    shmu26 Registered Member

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    Can't argue with that!

    @Mrkvonic used to blog about his experiences with installing distros on his old laptop, and he reported varying degrees of success with hardware support.
     
  22. wat0114

    wat0114 Registered Member

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    My laptop is a Lenovo E580, so far from being a museum piece. I had issues with the wifi adapter not working after my Debian Buster install, though I was able to resolve it after some Googling and finding the right drivers. All I'm trying to say is installing and setting up a Linux distro isn't necessarily going to be a walk in the park, but with some time invested searching, a solution can usually be found for any kind of driver or software issue encountered. It's just something for newcomers to Linux to be aware of. It's also not unusual for problems to creep up later, perhaps days or weeks later, usually after installing updates, so that's also something to be aware of. There's also the learning curve with getting familiar with Linux itself, as it's similar in many ways to Windows, but many differences too.

    MX or Mint are probably two of the best beginner-friendly distros as starting points for least amount of hassle and probability that things will "just work" straightaway out of the box.
     
  23. pb1

    pb1 Registered Member

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    Ok.
    I have a lot of reading to do before i " jump in" to inform myself deeper about Linux and its function so i feel that i know what i am doing and what problems can occur. Especially about the 3 that i am interested in right now. Kubuntu, MX KDE Beta and Mint Cinnamon.

    I`ve forgot that i tested some Linux dist many years ago and thought it was confusing so i uninstalled it. But so was Windows the first time so, how hard can it be :shifty:.

    Your input has been very valuable, thank you!
     
  24. Gringo95

    Gringo95 Registered Member

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    This is a good point. I remember how many people struggled initially when smart phones were first introduced now it's just another every day tool.
     
  25. pb1

    pb1 Registered Member

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    I see.

    That learning curve is always present, as it was with Windows.
    Right now i am leaning towards testing MX KDE Beta. It sounds... intriguing.

    Do you have a solution to the Spotify problem with updates that i mentioned before?
     
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