Another good point regarding hardware recognition in Linux and why Windows is so much better. I keep the latest wifi .deb package on file. I know Devuan recognizes the missing files and ask for them during install but can't remember exactly now which other distros do.
Here's a general linux forum, with better than average patience. I got good answers from them. https://linux.org/ Pick their minds for whatever info you can't get here.
Before I migrated to Linux, I collected a lot of information and read a lot, many sources. Very helpful were the Dedoimedo Linux articles [1]+[2]. I decided I wanted KDE, and a lot of available documentation, not too many difficulties, and good quality distro. That lead me to choosing Kubuntu 18.04 LTS (upgrade to 20.04.1 later, when the point release is available). Most of my migration to Kubuntu was easy. The only thing that puzzled me, before migrating, was what mount point to assign to my second internal drive, with installation. But that proved simpler than I thought. I chose to assign mount point: /home/[username]/[label for second drive], and after installation I changed that second drive's ownership to user, by installing Krusader file manager and using that in root mode (Tools/ Start Root Mode Krusader). One of the things that is great of Kubuntu and other KDE distros, is that so much is customizable through the GUI. For only a few things I had to use the command line: LibreOffice doesn't seem to offer a Dutch spellchecker extension, so in terminal: sudo apt install hunspell-nl [0] As all *buntu, Kubuntu needs a little help to be able to play DVDs [3]: sudo apt install libdvd-pkg && sudo dpkg-reconfigure libdvd-pkg In spite of that, VLC media player doesn't play Disney/Pixar DVDs very well, like most media players, so I use Kodi to view Disney/Pixar DVDs. [4], [5] Trying to burn a CD using K3b, I got "cdrecord has no permission to open the device". That was fixed in terminal: sudo chmod 4711 /usr/bin/wodim sudo chmod 4711 /usr/bin/cdrdao [6], [7] Also I used the command line for installation of a few applications that were hard to locate in Kubuntu's Discover package manager, but most of the available software should be easy to find in Discover.
Thank you very much, that will certainly be very helpfull. I guess it should read - can get and not "can`t get" .
That`s why i am thinking on trying MX KDE, the new beta version. Any experience or knowledge about MX ? It seems to me that there can be a lot of command running to get Linux to work, where do one get all these commands? Does it come tips on how to do it with the install or do one have to figure it out oneself. If it is the latter one almost have to be a programmer to handle the Os and that complicate things of course and makes Linux unsmooth. Thanks for the links!
Not me, I'm sorry. Only Kubuntu, so far. The command for the Dutch spellchecker for LibreOffice came from the LibreOffice thread here on Wilders [0]. The commands for playing DVDs on Kubuntu came from the Ubuntu documentation [3]. The fix for burning a CD using K3b came from the two sources that I linked, [6], [7]. I was and still am way too much a Linux newbie to figure out those things by myself. Luckily, almost anything can be found with a good web search, or by asking.
@pb1 You asked before about keeping the system clean. Just run this every once in a while. Code: sudo apt autoremove It will clean things up.
Debian Stable is even more reliable than Ubuntu, but unfortunately this reliability comes at a cost of older packages including kernel which means no drivers for new hardware. Debian is a almost unique due to their stricter stance on licenses - they don't include closed-source firmware in their system in "main" section of repository. Official installer is built based on "main" repository, so it doesn't include all that closed-source firmware. There are sections such as "contrib" and "non-free", but they are disabled by default and not considered fully official parts of Debian. I understand their stance. This stance isn't purely philosophical - developers of other distributions with closed-source firmware can't really do much about security and reliability bugs in firmware that is part of OS. Even Microsoft can't do that. They can just wait for fixes from hardware vendor, which may not be delivered at all or create other reliability issue. I calculated pros and cons for me and enabled these sections for my Debian install being fully aware of that, but I understand their stance on that issue.
There is also package known as deborphan. It lists dependencies not used by other packages listed in apt repository of locally installed packages. Be aware that software installed from different source than repository may not be known to apt and removing these packages may cause broken depencies for these programs.
Whilst this is true it isn't necessarily the easiest systems that give the best experience. Google for instance had the whole world to choose from but selected Gentoo/Portage as the base for ChromeOS. Since Sabayon is now struggling and likely to break if installed from the original ISO's (daily builds are OK but not so stable), perhaps the best example is Calculate Linux and how difficult is it to "emerge conky" or "emerge ffmpegthumbs"?
@pb1, If you would need a Swedish spell checker for LibreOffice, you wouldn't need to use the command line, I see there is a Swedish Spellchecker extension for LibreOffice. Or, if you would install your distro of choice in Swedish, not in English like I did, a Swedish spell checker dictionary may be included automatically, but that may depend on your distro and on your language of choice.
Yeah, it was over time I realized that about Debian. Still, I have it installed alongside Windows 10 on a dual-boot setup, and I'm to this day very happy with it. it's incredibly stable, quick and nimble.
So true. Now I understand how I broke my printer driver. It was as simple as Code: sudo apt autoremove Fortunately, bash presents a list of the packages to be removed, so if you read the list carefully, you stand a chance of avoiding mess-ups like what happened to me.
When it comes to not breaking things gold standard in Gnu/Linux is to use only packages from official distribution repositories. I understand that not everybody wants to limit themself to these packages, but installing libraries, programs, packages from other sources may break something and you should know what you are doing and are aware of possible consequences.
